Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness. Hilary Mantel artefactdiscountill Change image and share on social
I think if I hadn't become a writer I would just have suppressed that part of my personality. I think I would have put it in a box that I never opened. Hilary Mantel boxopenpart Change image and share on social
Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things. Hilary Mantel 20sbackfrench share on social
I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.' Hilary Mantel halfhallpage Change image and share on social
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. Hilary Mantel bookbrowsecollector Change image and share on social
'Wolf Hall' attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes. Hilary Mantel attemptchronologyduplicate Change image and share on social
You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart. Hilary Mantel adultalterbanal share on social
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him. Hilary Mantel contextelderequally share on social
Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready. Hilary Mantel audiencebookmarket Change image and share on social
The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them. Hilary Mantel adhereartclosely share on social
