571 Quotes by Hilary Mantel

Even when she said her last words, asking the people to pray for the king, she was looking over the head of the crowd. Still, she did not let hope weaken her. Few women are so resolute at the last, and not many men.

Jesus Maria,’ the boy says. ‘The star that guides us to Bethlehem. I thought it was an engine for torture.

The migraine angel leaned hard on my shoulder and belched into my face.

He has always rated Anne highly as a strategist. He has never believed in her as a passionate, spontaneous woman. Everything she does is calculated, like everything he does.

History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past.

The order goes to the Tower, ‘Bring up the bodies.’ Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it is 12 May, a Friday.

Look up and see the wind, For we be ready to sail. Noah’s Flood, a miracle play.

Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying,” he manages to smile, “that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string – one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose.

But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?