Quotes by Hilary Mantel

About Hilary Mantel:

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of ’94, an obsc...

Hilary Mantel

I can’t divide Camille’s loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.

Hilary Mantel

Good morning,” she said. “Are you drunk?” She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. “Do I look it?” “No. Where is Citizen Danton?” “I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismembering him for the l...

Hilary Mantel

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 hal...

Hilary Mantel

The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

Hilary Mantel

...and I sometimes think that the fading out of the individual personality is what one should desire, not the status of a hero—a sort of effacement of oneself from history. The entire record of the human race has been falsified, it has been made up...

Hilary Mantel

The year now is 1774. Poseurs or not, it is time to grow up. It is time to enter the public realm, the world of public acts and public attitudes. Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corp...

Hilary Mantel

I do no damage. This is damage, this.” He picked up a paper from Camille’s desk. “I can’t read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself.

Hilary Mantel

Georges told me he would be back, and I have no reason to disbelieve him—but perhaps you’d like to sit down here and write him a letter? Tell him you can’t manage the thing without him, which is true. Tell him Robespierre says he can’t get al...

Hilary Mantel

But just as everything was going along politely, quietly and wonderfully — in poured Citizen Danton and his crew.

Hilary Mantel

The Robespierre women (as one tended to think of them now) were all on display. Madame looked actively, rather intimidatingly benevolent; it was her aim in life to find a Jacobin who was hungry, then to go into the kitchen and make extravagant effort...

Hilary Mantel

May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into “permanent session” — what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term!

Hilary Mantel

I think back to those days after the Bastille fell, the Mercure Nationale run from the back of the shop, that little Louise sticking her well-bred nose in the air and flouncing off to bawl out their printer—and you know, he was a good lad, Françoi...

Hilary Mantel

People said— though this felt like a heresy— that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh.

Hilary Mantel

This may interest you. A letter from my dear cousin Fouquier-Tinville.” Camille cast an eye over his relative’s best handwriting. “Squirm, flattery, abasement, squirm, dearest sweetest Camille, squirm squirm squirm … ‘the election of the Pa...

Hilary Mantel

Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief with a rambling-rose design. Instead I'm on the rue des ...

Hilary Mantel

Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach...

Hilary Mantel

As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sist...

Hilary Mantel

This revolution - will it be a living?' 'We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.' 'Is that usual?' 'Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases.

Hilary Mantel

He feared, in his secret heart, that one day in company the baby would sit up and speak; that it would engage his eyes, appraise him, and say, 'You prick.

Hilary Mantel

All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, there's not much difference between politics and sex; it's all about power. He didn't suppose he was the first person in the world to ...

Hilary Mantel

Author Bio

  • NameHilary Mantel
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • BornJuly 6, 1952
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksWolf Hall; Bring Up The Bodies
  • AwardsCommander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Hawthornden Prize; Man Booker Prize; Man Booker Prize