571 Quotes by Hilary Mantel

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

Again, take someone who’s crippled or deformed; they can’t be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds (who can’t see much anyway) get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he’d have fewer problems, but it’s surprising how few of them fall into all those categories.

Robespierre has never forgiven his friends the injuries he has done them, nor the kindnesses he has received from them, nor the talents some of them possess that he doesn’t.

Life’s going to change. You thought it already had? Not nearly as much as it’s going to change now.Everything you disapprove of you’ll call “aristocratic.” This term can be applied to food, to books and plays, to modes of speech, to hairstyles and to such venerable institutions as prostitution and the Roman Catholic Church.If “Liberty” was the watchword of the first Revolution, “Equality” is that of the second. “Fraternity” is a less assertive quality, and must creep in where it may.

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 when he spoke from the tribune at the Jacobins. 'It will be an abattoir, an abattoir of a nation.

Some people know they are condemned; some have time to pray, and others die struggling and screaming, fighting to their last breath. An irate killer stamps in to the tribunal—“Use your heads, give us a bloody chance, can’t you? We can’t keep up.” So the prisoners are waved away airily by their judges—“Go, you’re free.” Outside the door a steady man waits to fell them. Freedom is the last thing they know.

My father doesn’t have views. He would like to, but he can’t take the risk.

Good morning,” she said. “Are you drunk?”She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. “Do I look it?”“No. Where is Citizen Danton?”“I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He’s in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?”“And is he drunk?”“Very. What is all this harping on intoxication?

It’s all right for you, you and Danton. I have to go and stutter for two hours at the Jacobins and probably be knocked down again by maddened violin makers and trampled by all sorts of tradesmen.Whilst Danton spends his evenings feeling up his new girlfriend and you lie around here in a nice fever, not too high. If you’re an instrument of destiny, and anyone would do instead, why don’t you take a holiday?