571 Quotes by Hilary Mantel

Were you ever at the cathedral in Chartres? You walk the labyrinth,” he says, “set into the pavement, and it seems there is no sense in it. But if you follow it faithfully it leads you straight to the center. Straight to where you should be.

And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?

As I am a woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world. I am the devil’s gateway, the cursed ingress. I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom he was not bold enough to attack, except through me. Well, that is their view of the situation. My view is that there are too many priests with scant learning and smaller occupation. And I wish the Pope and the Emperor and all Spaniards were in the sea and drowned.

Movements are restricted. Even a duke must manage with only six men to guard and serve him. Strangers are barred. Delivery men must quit the precincts as soon as they have dropped off their loads, and the royal nursery be scrubbed out twice a day.

Sometimes it is years before we can see who are the heroes in an affair and who are the victims.

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.

Men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

This is the best he can hope for, unless. There is always unless.

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.