Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.

— Hilary Mantel

Fare looked up, his mobile face composed. "Goodbye," he said. "Georges-Jacques--study law. Law is a weapon.

— Hilary Mantel

Fare stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.” Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...” Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.” Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Even you.” Fare’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.” He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fare said. “Even if it kills one of us.” Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fare continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.

— Hilary Mantel

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

— Hilary Mantel

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the Madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

— Hilary Mantel

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

— Hilary Mantel

For I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood.

— Hilary Mantel

Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

— Hilary Mantel

Give me a book,” she said. “A book of sermons, anything.”“What do you want a book for?”“I want words. I’ve got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.

— Hilary Mantel

Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takes all the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb is barren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad.

— Hilary Mantel