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Hilary Mantel Quotes
Hilary Mantel Quotes
Hilary Mantel
English
Writer
Born:
Jul 6
,
1952
Been
Life
People
Think
Writing
You
Related authors:
Arthur C. Clarke
D. H. Lawrence
Douglas Adams
Gilbert K. Chesterton
John Ruskin
Ricky Gervais
Rudyard Kipling
Thomas Paine
It is difficult to know how the Tudors actually spoke because we're going back before Shakespeare; much of the drama from that period is courtly, allegorical.
Hilary Mantel
Before
Difficult
Drama
Back
Allegorical
Shakespeare
Spoke
Know
Period
Because
How
Going
Much
Actually
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.
Hilary Mantel
Music
You
People
Problem
Words
Walk
Will
Pour
Party
Lost
Whatever
Other
Bath
Telephone
Draw
Stuck
Take
Pie
Make
Calls
Exercise
Stick
Go
Get
Listen
Just
Where
Should
Your
Away
Desk
Meditate
Sleep
There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want a normal life, you might reverse the process.
Hilary Mantel
Life
You
Become
Books
Plenty
Tell
Writer
How
Reverse
Normal
Normal Life
Want
Process
Might
For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.
Hilary Mantel
Myself
Together
Book
Way
Bit
Collage
Running
Threads
Object
Only
Construct
Between
Like
Know
Make
Narrative
How
Isolated
Metaphor
Dialogue
Lines
Scrap
Common
Different
Holds
Which
Elaborate
Description
Here
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Hilary Mantel
Knowledge
History
Experience
Events
Mercy
Every
Possess
Give
Student
He
Him
Equally
Without
Context
His
Handed
Offers
Social
Elders
Us
Youngest
Ground
Present
I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
Hilary Mantel
Me
Writing
Half
Wolf
Think
Took
Along
Hall
Been
Should
Page
Novel
It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you have these distinct phases.
Hilary Mantel
Life
You
Women
Mother
Become
Other
Distinct
Follows
Around
Whereas
Grandmother
Your
Lives
Phases
I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are, and to look where things have gone missing.
Hilary Mantel
Time
Great
People
Try
Great Deal
Gone
Research
Side
Spend
Background
Out
Run
Details
Finding
See
Scene
Missing
Look
Involved
Deal
Up
Contradictions
Accounts
Where
Available
Incident
Things
Biographies
I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.
Hilary Mantel
Memories
People
Listening
Old
Sister
About
Knee
Talk
Up
Very
Children
Grew
Elder
Grandmother
Old People
Who
Her
My first two novels were very black comedies.
Hilary Mantel
Black
First
Comedies
Were
Very
Novels
Two
I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.
Hilary Mantel
Sometimes
Mind
Exhausted
Active
More
Ideas
Got
Gets
Body
Many
Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.
Hilary Mantel
Thoughts
People
Unlike
Select
Shape
Simplify
Like
Discard
Make
Make Up
Historian
Up
Interpret
The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them.
Hilary Mantel
Work
Art
You
Responsibility
Dramatic
Adhere
Intractable
Possible
Must
Find
Inside
Shape
Facts
Closely
Where
Them
Novelist
Inconvenient
Psychics tap into what is collective: our regret and our sense of time going by; our common repression and anxieties.
Hilary Mantel
Time
Regret
Collective
Sense
Our
Tap
Anxieties
Going
Common
Repression
My childhood gave me a very powerful sense of being spooked. I didn't know whether what I was seeing were sensory images of other people's unhappiness. Perhaps that was just the way the world manifested itself to me.
Hilary Mantel
Me
People
World
Sense
Other
Gave
Way
Seeing
Powerful
Perhaps
Know
Were
Itself
Very
Childhood
Just
Being
Whether
Manifested
Unhappiness
Sensory
Images
I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.
Hilary Mantel
Time
Spend
Mad
My Time
No-One
Since
Dead
Talking
Lot
Get
Paid
Thinks
Writing comes from that territory of being invalidated. But I had a sense of purpose, too. I wanted to stop apologising for my health, and I thought I might do some good.
Hilary Mantel
Health
Good
Writing
Thought
Sense
Too
Some
Purpose
Had
Territory
Stop
Being
Wanted
Might
When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.
Hilary Mantel
You
Women
Experience
Clothes
State
Sold
Inside
Had
Like
Perhaps
Most
Known
Understand
Department
Department Store
Being
Store
Sizes
Worked
Should
Notion
Thin
Fat
When you get fat, you get a new personality. You can't help it. Complete strangers ascribe it to you.
Hilary Mantel
You
Personality
Strangers
Complete
New
Get
Ascribe
Help
Fat
If you skew the endocrine system, you lose the pathways to self. When endocrine patterns change, it alters the way you think and feel. One shift in the pattern tends to trip another.
Hilary Mantel
You
Change
Lose
Think
Way
System
Trip
Tends
Self
Feel
Another
Shift
Pattern
Patterns
'Wolf Hall' attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.
Hilary Mantel
Memory
Chronology
Wolf
Way
Attempts
Leaps
Hall
Loops
Historian
Duplicate
Flashes
Works
I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.
Hilary Mantel
Work
Has-Been
Until
Protective
Polished
Am
Been
Anyone
Showing
Sometimes I fantasize that all my furniture has been destroyed in a cataclysm, and I have to start again with only the stationery catalogue. My entire house would become an office, which would be an overt recognition of the existing state of affairs.
Hilary Mantel
Sometimes
Become
State
Furniture
Destroyed
Recognition
Has-Been
Would
Would-Be
Entire
Only
Catalogue
House
Affairs
Been
Existing
Office
Which
Again
Fantasize
Start
Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
Hilary Mantel
Time
You
Book
Else
Market
Would
Vanished
Perceived
Write
Like
Well
Read
Audience
Ready
May
Anybody
Anybody Else
Your
Why
By The Time
Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.
Hilary Mantel
People
Every
Worlds
Unlikely
Drawn
Writer
Between
Like
Different
Different Worlds
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.
Hilary Mantel
Life
World
Old
Young
Sweet
Think
Honey
Worse
Out
Point
Facts
Always
Equipped
Historical
Getting
Even
Compared
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