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.
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Of course I have had to rearrange the text a bit— bugger about with it, as Hébert would say.

Hilary Mantel

You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing your tempestuous southerner impersonation.

Hilary Mantel

1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris: The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil government; a rule which consists not only in mai...

Hilary Mantel

And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the Natio...

Hilary Mantel

The prose,” Robespierre said. “It’s so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style.

Hilary Mantel

Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny …); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been ref...

Hilary Mantel

This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he i...

Hilary Mantel

Fabre looked up, his mobile face composed. "Good-bye," he said. "Georges-Jacques--study law. Law is a weapon.

Hilary Mantel

I know she’s rather plain, but every girl has a right to conceal that fact from people who haven’t seen her.

Hilary Mantel

The door was flung open. Maurice Duplay filled it; energetic master, shirt- sleeves rolled up. He threw out his arms, the good Jacobin Duplay, and formed a sentence totally original, something which had never been uttered in the history of the world:...

Hilary Mantel

Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in ’91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me.” He shook his head. “This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can’t carry his country on the soles of his shoes.

Hilary Mantel

The main thing is, the constraints have come off style. What we are saying now is that the Revolution does not proceed in a pitiless, forward direction, its politics and its language becoming ever more gross and simplistic: the Revolution is always f...

Hilary Mantel

Provence and Artois will be back. Antoinette. She will resume her state. The priests will be back. Children now in their cradles will suffer for what their fathers and mothers did.' Marat leaned forward, his body hunched, his eyes intent, as he did w...

Hilary Mantel

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the t...

Hilary Mantel

I daresay something will happen, between now and ’91, to make your fortunes look up.

Hilary Mantel

He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. 'Of course there will be a revolution,' he said. 'You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell, I hope. In fifteen years you tyrants and parasites will b...

Hilary Mantel

I tell you, dear Citizen Camille—it’s not the deaths I can’t stand. It’s the judgements, the judgements in the courtroom.

Hilary Mantel

So, Lucile thinks, Gabrielle has the prospect of escape; but in her apartment at the rue des Cordeliers, she sits still and silent, in the conscious postures of pregnant women. Sometimes she cries; this chit Louise Gély trips down the stairs to join...

Hilary Mantel

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

Hilary Mantel

As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life. pg.404

Hilary Mantel

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

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