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He Once Thought It Himself, That He Might Die With Grief: For His Wife, His Daughters, His Sisters, His Father And Master The Cardinal. But Pulse, Obdurate, Keeps Its Rhythm. You Think You Cannot Keep Breathing, But Your Ribcage Has Other Ideas, Rising And Falling, Emitting Sighs. You Must Thrive In Spite Of Yourself; And So That You May Do It, God Takes Out Your Heart Of Flesh, And Gives You A Heart Of Stone.

-Hilary Mantel

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He Once Thought It

Hilary Mantel

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He Once Thought It Himself, That He Might Die With Grief: For His Wife, His Daughters, His Sisters, His Father And Master The Cardinal. But Pulse, Obdurate, Keeps Its Rhythm. You Think You Cannot Keep Breathing, But Your Ribcage Has Other Ideas, Rising And Falling, Emitting Sighs. You Must Thrive In Spite Of Yourself; And So That You May Do It, God Takes Out Your Heart Of Flesh, And Gives You A Heart Of Stone.

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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.

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[margaret Thatcher] Aroused Such Strong Loathing In So Many People. That's The Fact That Interests Me.

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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 National Assembly He Was A Liberal; Now He Is A Republican. Isn't It Then Logical That He Should Be Thrown Into Gaol, July 1, On Suspicion Of Passing Military Secrets To The Enemy?

I Do Myself Think That History Is A Set Of Skills Rather Than A Narrative.

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.

I Am Usually Protective Of My Work, Not Showing It To Anyone Until It Has Been Redrafted And Polished.

For What's The Point Of Breeding Children, If Each Generation Does Not Improve On What Went Before.

It's Complementary. It's Fairly Clear Where The Boundaries Are. When I Start Telling You The Contents Of His Head, I Am Making It Up. But I Try To Make It Up Based On What Is On The Record. So Even My Wildest Speculations [on Thomas Cromwell] Will Have A Root Somewhere.

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

The Worship Of Thomas More Goes Beyond Catholics.

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

[margaret] Thatcher Could Fake Her Class Background, But She Couldn't Fake The Quality Of Her Mind.

The Word 'however' Is Like An Imp Coiled Beneath Your Chair. It Induces Ink To Form Words You Have Not Yet Seen, And Lines To March Across The Page And Overshoot The Margin. There Are No Endings. If You Think So You Are Deceived As To Their Nature. They Are All Beginnings. Here Is One.

Fear Of Commitment Lies Behind The Fear Of Writing.

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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.

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

Every Leader Operates Under The Threat Of Assassination.

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.

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Procrastination

I Was The Subject Of An Experiment In Love. I Lived My Life Under Her Gaze, Undergoing Certain Trials For Her So That She Would Not Have To Undergo Them For Herself. But, How Are Our Certainties Forged, Except By The Sweat And Tears Of Other People? If Your Parents Don't Teach You How To Live; You Learn It From Books; And Clever People Watch You Learn From Your Mistakes.

It Was Unfortunate For Other Women Who Might Come After [margaret Thatcher] That The First Woman To Become Prime Minister Was A Male Impersonator.

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Human Condition

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A Sea-green Sky: Lamps Blossoming White. This Is Marginal Land: Fields Of Strung Wire, Of Treadless Tyres In Ditches, Fridges Dead On Their Backs, And Starving Ponies Cropping The Mud. It Is A Landscape Running With Outcasts And Escapees, With Afghans, Turks And Kurds: With Scapegoats, Scarred With Bottle And Burn Marks, Limping From The Cities With Broken Ribs. The Life Forms Here Are Rejects, Or Anomalies: The Cats Tipped From Speeding Cars, And The Heathrow Sheep, Their Fleece Clotted With The Stench Of Aviation Fuel.

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He Once Thought It Himself, That He Might Die With Grief: For His Wife, His Daughters, His Sisters, His Father And Master The Cardinal. But Pulse, Obdurate, Keeps Its Rhythm. You Think You Cannot Keep Breathing, But Your Ribcage Has Other Ideas, Rising And Falling, Emitting Sighs. You Must Thrive In Spite Of Yourself; And So That You May Do It, God Takes Out Your Heart Of Flesh, And Gives You A Heart Of Stone.

Truth Can Break The Gates Down, Truth Can Howl In The Street; Unless Truth Is Pleasing, Personable And Easy To Like, She Is Condemned To Stay Whimpering At The Back Door.

I Dislike Pastiche; It Attracts Attention To The Language Only.

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'show Up At The Desk' Is One Of The First Rules Of Writing, But For 'wolf Hall' I Was About 30 Years Late.

My First Career Ambitions Involved Turning Into A Boy; I Intended To Be Either A Railway Guard Or A Knight Errant.

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You Can Be Merry With The King, You Can Share A Joke With Him. But As Thomas More Used To Say, It's Like Sporting With A Tamed Lion. You Tousle Its Mane And Pull Its Ears, But All The Time You're Thinking, Those Claws, Those Claws, Those Claws.

[h]ope Takes You By The Throat Like A Stranger, It Makes Your Heart Leap.

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Those Who Are Made Can Be Unmade.

When I Began To Read As An Adult, I Read Almost Exclusively Novelists Of A Generation Back. I Did The Russians, Then I Started Getting More Up To Date. 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.

What Is It We Are Hating? It Goes Beyond Politics. I Suppose That My Fascination With [margaret Thatcher] Is Not Just With Her Political Record But With Her As A Phenomenon.

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

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 Obscene Feminine Inversion Will Appear: A Thin Crimson Ribbon, Worn Round A Bare White Neck.

When Narratives Fracture, When Words Fail, I Take Consolation From The Part Of My Life That Always Works: The Stationery Order. The Mail-order Stationery People Supply Every Need From Royal Blue Quink To A Dazzling Variety Of Portable Hard Drives.

As A Writer, You Owe It To Yourself Not To Get Stuck In A Rut Of Looking At The World In A Certain Way.

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.

Lives Of Others

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

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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.

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Though I Have Never Thought Of Myself As A Book Collector, There Are Shelves In Our House Browsed So Often, On So Many Rainy Winter Nights, That The Contents Have Seeped Into Me As If By Osmosis.

The Things You Think Are The Disasters In Your Life Are Not The Disasters Really. Almost Anything Can Be Turned Around: Out Of Every Ditch, A Path, If You Can Only See It.

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I Think I Would Have Been A Reasonably Good Lawyer. I Have A Faculty For Making Sense Of Mountains Of Information.

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[t]he Heart Is Like Any Other Organ, You Can Weigh It On A Scale.

The Fate Of Peoples Is Made Like This, Two Men In Small Rooms. Forget The Coronations, The Conclaves Of Cardinals, The Pomp And Processions. This Is How The World Changes: A Counter Pushed Across A Table, A Pen Stroke That Alters The Force Of A Phrase, A Woman's Sigh As She Passes And Leaves On The Air A Trail Of Orange Flower Or Rose Water; Her Hand Pulling Close The Bed Curtain, The Discreet Sigh Of Flesh Against Flesh.

God Takes Out Your Heart Of Flesh, And Gives You A Heart Of Stone.

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

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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.

You're Only Young Once, They Say, But Doesn't It Go On For A Long Time? More Years Than You Can Bear.

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.

You Think You're Writing One Historical Novel And It Turns Into Three, And I'm Quite Used To A Short Story Turning Into A Novel - That's Happened Through My Whole Career.

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

A Statute Is Written To Entrap Meaning, A Poem To Escape It.

I Will Get Into Trouble, I Am Sure, Because Since My Kate Middleton Speech And Before, Certain Papers Were After Me. I Am Not Saying, However, That It Would Have Been Moral Or Right To Assassinate Mrs. [margaret] Thatcher, But I Know It Will Be Read That Way. I Know It Will Cause A Problem.

Beneath Every History, Another History.

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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

History Is A Set Of Skills Rather Than A Narrative.

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

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.

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, Really Mess Up Your Life.

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

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

I Once Stole A Book. It Was Really Just The Once, And At The Time I Called It Borrowing. It Was 1970, And The Book, I Could See By Its Lack Of Date Stamps, Had Been Lying Unappreciated On The Shelves Of My Convent School Library Since Its Publication In 1945.

Insights Don't Usually Arrive At My Desk, But Go Into Notebooks When I'm On The Move. Or Half-asleep.

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.

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.

By The Tits Of Holy Agnes

For Historians, Creative Writers Provide A Kind Of Pornography.

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

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

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.

The Weight Of The Old World Is Stifling, And Trying To Shovel Its Weight Off Your Life Is Tiring Just To Think About. The Constant Shuttling Of Opinions Is Tiring, And The Shuffling Of Papers Across Desks, The Chopping Of Logic And The Trimming Of Attitudes. There Must, Somewhere, Be A Simpler, More Violent World.

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.

Rafe Asks Him, Could The King's Freedom Be Obtained, Sir, With More Economy Of Means? Less Bloodshed? Look, He Says: Once You Have Exhausted The Process Of Negotiation And Compromise, One You Have Fixed On The Destruction Of An Enemy, That Destruction Must Be Swift And It Must Be Perfect. Before You Even Glance In His Direction, You Should Have His Name On A Warrant, The Ports Blocked, His Wife And Friends Bought, His Heir Under Your Protection, His Money In Your Strong Room And His Dog Running To Your Whistle. Before He Wakes In The Morning, You Should Have The Axe In Your Hand.

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