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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 Taking Of The Bastille. What Account Can We Take Of That, In Revolution? It Is The Nature Of Revolutions To Break Laws. We Are Not Justices Of The Peace; We Are Legislators To A New World.

-Hilary Mantel

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He Is Careful To

Hilary Mantel

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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 Taking Of The Bastille. What Account Can We Take Of That, In Revolution? It Is The Nature Of Revolutions To Break Laws. We Are Not Justices Of The Peace; We Are Legislators To A New World.

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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 Taking Of The Bastille. What Account Can We Take Of That, In Revolution? It Is The Nature Of Revolutions To Break Laws. We Are Not Justices Of The Peace; We Are Legislators To A New World.

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I Used To Think That When I Set Out That Doing The Research Was Enough! But Then The Gaps Would Emerge That Could Only Be Filled By The Imagination. And Imagination Only Comes When You Privilege The Subconscious, When You Make Delay And Procrastination Work For You.

Procrastination

When You Become Published And Become A Reviewer, Piles Of Books Come Along And You Are Pushed By Fashion And What You Are Commissioned To Do.

Like A Historian, I Interpret, Select, Discard, Shape, Simplify. Unlike A Historian, I Make Up People's Thoughts.

Some Readers Read A Book As If It Were An Instruction Manual, Expecting To Understand Everything First Time, But Of Course When You Write, You Put Into Every Sentence An Overflow Of Meaning, And You Create In Every Sentence As Many Resonances And Double Meanings And Ambiguities As You Can Possibly Pack In There, So That People Can Read It Again And Get Something New Each Time.

Suppose Within Each Book There Is Another Book, And Within Every Letter On Every Page Another Volume Constantly Unfolding; But These Volumes Take No Space On The Desk. Suppose Knowledge Could Be Reduced To A Quintessence, Held Within A Picture, A Sign, Held Within A Place Which Is No Place. Suppose The Human Skull Were To Become Capacious, Spaces Opening Inside It, Humming Chambers Like Beehives.

Like Every Writer, I'm Drawn By Unlikely Juxtapositions, Precisely-dated And Once-only Collisions Between People From Different Worlds.

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This Was An Idea Peculiar To Camille, Maximilien Thought, That The Worse Things Get, The Better They Get. No One Else Seems To Think This Way.

I Am Sure That All Politicians Seek The Home Connection With The Voter. But [margaret Thatcher] Carried It To Extremes.

What [margaret Thatcher] Made A Play For Was The Acquisitive: Our Greedy Nature. She Set Aside Other Things Like An Identification With Community, Altruism. The Only Collective That She Understood Was: Rally Around And Slay The Enemy.

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.

If You Are Without Impulses, You Are, To A Degree, Without Joy..." 469

I Think It Is Going To Take Another Fifty Years For The Report To Be In. If I Were To Give A Preliminary Report, I Would Say That [margaret Thatcher] Wrecked This Country.

History Is Always Changing Behind Us, And The Past Changes A Little Every Time We Retell It.

I Believe This Was [margaret Thatcher] Estimate Of The Voter: "these People Are So Stupid That They Will Vote For Me Because They Think I Know How To Run The Household."

Much Historical Fiction That Centers On Real People Has Always Been Deficient In Information, Lacking In Craft And Empty In Affect.

When I Came To Write My Thomas Cromwell Books, I Moved Onto The Center Ground Of English History, But I Was Never There Before. I Didn't Feel It Was My History Particularly, Coming From Northern Britain, Being Of Irish Extraction, Being A Cradle Catholic. The Image Of England I Grew Up With Felt Somewhere Else. There Was An Official England In Postcards, But It Wasn't One I Had Visited. But I Decided To March Onto The Center Ground And Occupy It Whether It Was Mine Or Not.

In Order To Successfully Impersonate Men, The Woman [margaret Thatcher] Launched A War.

He Thinks, I Remembered You, Thomas More, But You Didn't Remember Me. You Never Even Saw Me Coming.

It Is Almost A Joke, But A Joke That Nobody Tells.

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It Is All Very Well Planning What You Will Do In Six Months, What You Will Do In A Year, But It’s No Good At All If You Don’t Have A Plan For Tomorrow.

I Think If The Monarchy Were Removed Tomorrow, It Wouldn't Have A Huge Effect On The National Mind-set.

[margaret Thatcher] Was Always Talking About What The Prudent Housewife Should Do And What The Prudent Housewife Knew.

I Would Have Been A Disaster As A Career Politician. I Would Never Have Toed A Party Line.

[margaret Thatcher] Is A Woman Who, When She Wrote Her Entry For "who's Who," Didn't Include Her Mother. Now Whether That Was Corrected In Subsequent Editions, I Do Not Know.

You Can Have A Silence Full Of Words. A Lute Retains, In Its Bowl, The Notes It Has Played. The Viol, In Its Strings, Holds A Concord. A Shriveled Petal Can Hold Its Scent, A Prayer Can Rattle With Curses; An Empty House, When The Owners Have Gone Out, Can Still Be Loud With Ghosts.

In My 20s I Was In Constant Pain From Undiagnosed Endometriosis. With No Prospect Of A Cure, I Decided I Needed A Career - Writing - That Could Accommodate Being Ill.

To A Brit Of My Generation, One Of The Most Objectionable Things About [margaret] Thatcher Is Her Falsity. She Is A Total Construct. For One Thing, She Had A Made-over Accent.

When You Have Committed Enough Words To Paper, You Feel You Have A Spine Stiff Enough To Stand Up In The Wind. But When You Stop Writing, You Find That's All You Are - A Spine, A Row Of Rattling Vertebrae, Dried Out Like An Old Quill Pen.

She Is Very Plain. What Does Henry See In Her?'" "he Thinks She's Stupid. He Finds It Restful.

When I Began To Read As An Adult, My First Big Enthusiasm Was Evelyn Waugh. I Read Almost Exclusively Novelists Of A Generation Back. I Did The Russians, Then I Started Getting More Up To Date.

The More Facts I Can Have, The Better. I Can Operate Very Nicely Between Them, But I Am Not Very Good At Making Things Up. I Am Not Sure How Ethical It Is.

Memory Isn't A Theme; It's Part Of The Human Condition.

Human Condition

At New Year's He Had Given Anne A Present Of Silver Forks With Handles Of Rock Crystal. He Hopes She Will Use Them To Eat With, Not To Stick In People.

You Don't Get On By Being Original. You Don't Get On By Being Bright. You Don't Get On By Being Strong. You Get On By Being A Subtle Crook.

Some Of These Things Are True And Some Of Them Lies. But They Are All Good Stories.

My Concern Is Less The Monarchy As Such Than The Attempt Of A Fading Colonial Power To Hang Onto Grandeur.

I Spend A Lot Of My Time Talking To The Dead, But Since I Get Paid For It, No One Thinks I'm Mad.

[margaret Thatcher] Said There Was No Thing Such As Society. This Is What I Find So Interesting Psychologically. Where Did She Come From? She Had No Mother. Her Father Came From A Very Identifiable Background: Religious, Highly Conformist.

Florence And Milan Had Given Him Ideas More Flexible Than Those Of People Who'd Stayed At Home.

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.

If You Have A Good Story Idea, Don't Assume It Must Form A Prose Narrative. It May Work Better As A Play, A Screenplay Or A Poem. Be Flexible.

I've Got So Many Ideas, And Sometimes The More Exhausted My Body Gets, The More Active My Mind Gets.

People Who Wrote Literary Novels About The Past Probably Didn't Want Them Pegged As Historical Fiction. Certainly That Was True In England.

One Of The Ideals [margaret Thatcher] Grew Up With Was Self-denial And Postponement Of Gratification, And Yet She Went About To Create A Greedy, Short-term Society. It Is A Paradox.

I'm A Very Organised And Rational And Linear Thinker And You Have To Stop All That To Write A Novel.

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 Sister, And So On, Through The Quire.

You Mustn't Stand About. Come Home With Me To Dinner.’ ‘no.’ More Shakes His Head. ‘i Would Rather Be Blown Around On The River And Go Home Hungry. If I Could Trust You Only To Put Food In My Mouth – But You Will Put Words Into It.

There's A Feeling Of Power In Reserve, A Power That Drives Right Through The Bone, Like The Shiver You Sense In The Shaft Of An Axe When You Take It Into Your Hand. You Can Strike, Or You Can Not Strike, And If You Choose To Hold Back The Blow, You Can Still Feel Inside You The Resonance Of The Omitted Thing.

People Will Identify With A Persecuted Minority Without Asking Themselves What They Are Identifying With.

I Think It Took Me Half A Page Of 'wolf Hall' To Think: 'this Is The Novel I Should Have Been Writing All Along.'

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.

No Ruler In The History Of The World Has Ever Been Able To Afford A War. They're Not Affordable Things. No Prince Ever Says, 'this Is My Budget, So This Is The Kind Of War I Can Have.

There Is So Much Else In The World That Is More Interesting [ Than Monarchy].

I Didn't Cry Much After I Was 35, But Staggered Stony-faced Into Middle Age, A Handkerchief Still In My Bag Just In Case.

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.

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