The collection / 118 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1987 AD

England is always remaking herself, her cliffs eroding, her sandbanks drifting, springs bubbling up in dead ground. They regroup themselves while we sleep, the landscapes through which we move, and even the histories that trail us; the faces of the dead fade into other faces, as a spine of hills into the mist.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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02c. 1987 AD

Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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03c. 1987 AD

A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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04c. 1987 AD

In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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05c. 1987 AD

She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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06c. 1987 AD

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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07c. 1987 AD

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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08c. 1987 AD

The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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09c. 1987 AD

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life.[Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview]

Hilary Mantel / quote

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10c. 1987 AD

But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her endometriosis was imagined pain, From Oct 2009 Daily Mail interview]

Hilary Mantel / quote

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11c. 1987 AD

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be pat

Hilary Mantel / quote

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12c. 1987 AD

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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13c. 1987 AD

...this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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14c. 1987 AD

The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had ordered three weeks ago. Each day, some further evidence of a task half finished, a scheme incomplete. He found a novel, with her place marked.And this is it.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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15c. 1987 AD

His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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16c. 1987 AD

Last night he kept the vigil alone. He lay awake, wishing Liz back; waiting for her to come and lie beside him. It's true he is at Esher with the cardinal, not at home at the Austin Friars. But, he thought, she'll know how to find me. She'll look for the cardinal, drawn through the space between worlds by incense and candlelight. Whereever the cardinal is, I will be.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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17c. 1987 AD

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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18c. 1987 AD

Men say," Liz reaches for her scissors, "'I can't endure it when women cry'--just as people say, 'I can't endure this wet weather.' As if it were nothing to do with the men at all, the crying. Just one of those things that happen.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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19c. 1987 AD

He saw that it was the gaps that were important, the spaces between the threads which made the pattern, and not the threads themselves.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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20c. 1987 AD

By the hairy balls of Jesus

Hilary Mantel / quote

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21c. 1987 AD

This visit has compacted the court's quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small space within the town's walls. The travelers have become as intimate with each other as cards in a pack: contiguous, but their paper eyes blind.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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22c. 1987 AD

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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23c. 1987 AD

The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It resists finishing, and partly this is because words are not enough; my early world was synaesthesic, and I am haunted by the ghosts of my own sense impressions, which re-emerge when I try to write, and shiver between the lines.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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24c. 1987 AD

He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.

Hilary Mantel / quote

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