Latest Hilary Mantel Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• It was a very funny conference. I knew [Christopher Hitchens] before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It's alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn't feel neglected!

  Hilary Mantel

  Moving, Eye, Angel

  Source: newrepublic.com

• If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.

  Hilary Mantel

  Morning, Book, Writing

  Source: newrepublic.com

• In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.

  Hilary Mantel

  Perfect, Imagination, Empathy

  Source: newrepublic.com

• The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett.I couldn't get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plots are rubbish. But we don't read her for that. There are pages and pages of dialogue. What it requires is real effort and attention.

  Hilary Mantel

  Real, Ivy, Effort

  Source: newrepublic.com

• 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.

  Hilary Mantel

  Fashion, Book, Reviewers

  Source: newrepublic.com

• I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Burrs, Gore

  Source: newrepublic.com

• 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.

  Hilary Mantel

  Novelists, Adults, Generations

  Source: newrepublic.com

• My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Writing, Historical Novels

  Source: newrepublic.com

• People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

  Hilary Mantel

  Past, People, Historical

  Source: newrepublic.com

• 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.

  Hilary Mantel

  Roots, Trying, Records

  Source: newrepublic.com

• I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.

  Hilary Mantel

  Rivals, Biographies, Historian

  Source: newrepublic.com

• 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.

  Hilary Mantel

  Facts, Ethical, Very Good

  Source: newrepublic.com

• One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.

  Hilary Mantel

  Kings, Frustration, Light

  Source: newrepublic.com

• For me, it is about using everything that is there and using the gaps in the record, figuring out why the gaps might be there. And then when you move on to the level of what historians said, laying the interpretations side by side. You also have to look back at the documents and make your own judgments. What the record says and what people say about it. A novelist can fill the gaps in a way that a biographer cannot.

  Hilary Mantel

  Moving, People, Novelists

  Source: newrepublic.com

• Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.

  Hilary Mantel

  Real, Night, People

  Source: newrepublic.com

• People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

  Hilary Mantel

  People, Minorities, Asking

  Source: newrepublic.com

• The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.

  Hilary Mantel

  Catholic, Worship

  Source: newrepublic.com

• To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.

  Hilary Mantel

  Lost Love, People, Burning

  Source: newrepublic.com

• My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

  Hilary Mantel

  Fading, Monarchy, Concern

  Source: newrepublic.com

• 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.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Writing, Somewhere Else

  Source: newrepublic.com

• I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go.

  Hilary Mantel

  Couple, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: newrepublic.com

• There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy].

  Hilary Mantel

  Interesting, World, Monarchy

  Source: newrepublic.com

• I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.

  Hilary Mantel

  Thinking, Mind, Tomorrow

  Source: newrepublic.com

• I do myself think that history is a set of skills rather than a narrative.

  Hilary Mantel

  Thinking, Skills, Narrative

  Source: newrepublic.com

• When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.

  Hilary Mantel

  Islands, People, Stories

  Source: newrepublic.com