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394138f
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You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.' 'No.' More shakes his head. 'I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth - but you will put words into it.
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humor
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Hilary Mantel |
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e9c9521
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He never lives in a single reality, but in a shifting shadow-mesh of diplomatic possibilities.
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Hilary Mantel |
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5d99f39
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A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
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Hilary Mantel |
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3c681db
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He wonders again if the dead need translators; perhaps in a moment, in a simple twist of unbecoming, they know everything they need to know.
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Hilary Mantel |
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f7764fc
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It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the ; he takes the blow perfectly, its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the right direction, moving at the right speed. His colour does not alter. His voice does not shake. "Healthy?" he says. "Then I thank God for his favour to us. As I thank you, my lords, for this comfortable intelligence." He thinks, Henry has been rehearsing...
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Hilary Mantel |
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d882578
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By the tits of Holy Agnes
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wolf-hall
saint
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Hilary Mantel |
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b2c14b7
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And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marshes of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at..
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Hilary Mantel |
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f7fc821
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Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!
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Hilary Mantel |
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6cb623b
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But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?" 398"
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Hilary Mantel |
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019b17a
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Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.
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Hilary Mantel |
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a42df1e
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I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on who went before?
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Hilary Mantel |
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9a012a8
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This revolution - will it be a living?' 'We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.' 'Is that usual?' 'Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases.
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Hilary Mantel |
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bab39dc
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No rational man could worship a God so simply vengeful
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rational
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Hilary Mantel |
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d76d14b
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Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.
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Hilary Mantel |
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816b3e4
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It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.
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Hilary Mantel |
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6afeda4
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If a man spoke to you in that tone, you'd invite him to step outside and ask someone to hold your coat." 378"
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Hilary Mantel |
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d71839f
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this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.
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loss
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Hilary Mantel |
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0decbcd
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As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.
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jurnalism
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Hilary Mantel |
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a8e7490
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92, '93, '94. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death.
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Hilary Mantel |
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7e4d631
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He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind her hungry black eyes. "I believe any woman who can say no to the King of England and keep on saying it, has the wit to say no to any number of men, including you, including Harry Percy, including anyone else she may choose to torment for her own sport while she is arranging her career in the way it suits her. So I think, ..
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Hilary Mantel |
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4569913
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Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?
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Hilary Mantel |
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13e7b84
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a grey wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream
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Hilary Mantel |
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b1ed225
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Look at my face: I am not afraid of any man alive.
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Hilary Mantel |
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04b9bfd
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Possibly it's something women do: spend time imagining what it's like to be each other. One can learn from that, he thinks.
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Hilary Mantel |
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095b0ed
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The multitude," Cavendish says, "is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down--for the novelty of the thing."
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Hilary Mantel |
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9b92b6a
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I picked up a snake once. In Italy." "Why did you do that?" "For a bet." "Was it poisonous?" "We didn't know. That was the point of the bet." "Did it bite you?" "Of course." "Why of course?" "It wouldn't be much of a story, would it? If I'd put it down unharmed, and away it slid?" --
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thomas-cromwell
italy
snakes
stories
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Hilary Mantel |
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6eb6f7b
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There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins.
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Hilary Mantel |
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082f199
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This was an idea peculiar to Camille, Maximilien thought, that the worse things get, the better they get. No one else seems to think this way.
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Hilary Mantel |
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b28f33e
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DANTON: Could you indeed? It's you idealists who make the best tyrants. ROBESPIERRE: It seems a bit late to be having this conversation. I've had to take up violence now, and so much else. We should have discussed it last year.
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Hilary Mantel |
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d439ac2
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He thinks, if you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea. Even if you had never seen the ocean you had a picture of it in your head from what you had been told by foreign people who sometimes came upriver. You knew that one day you would go out into a world of marble pavements and peacocks, of hillsides buzzing with heat, the fragrance of crushed herbs rising around you as you walked. You p..
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Hilary Mantel |
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7e07da1
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The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had ordered three weeks ago. Each day, some further evidence of a task half finished, a scheme incomplete. He found a novel, with her place marked. And this is it.
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loss
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Hilary Mantel |
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f63fc4f
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Nothing hurts, or perhaps it's that everything hurts, because there is no separate pain that he can pick out.
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Hilary Mantel |
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e067a1c
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By the hairy balls of Jesus
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wolf-hall
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Hilary Mantel |
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2603de2
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You . . . person," he says; and again, "you nobody from Hell, you whore-spawn, you cluster of evil, you lawyer."
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Hilary Mantel |
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b0bebbd
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God knows our hearts. There is no need for an idle formula or an intermediary. No need for language either: God is beyond translation.
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Hilary Mantel |
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e4a013b
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Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals.
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Hilary Mantel |
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1252247
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Anne's lovers are phantom gentlemen, flitting by night with adulterous intent. They come and go by night, unchallenged. They skim over the river like midges, flicker against the dark, their doublets sewn with diamonds. The moon sees them, peering from her hood of bone, and Thames water reflects them, glimmering like fish, like pearls.
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Hilary Mantel |
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63670f1
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When men decided women could be educated - this is what I think - they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games, they made them were collars and ties. It was a way to concede the right to learning, yet remain safe; the products of the system would always be inferior to the original model. Women were forced to imitate men, and bound not to succeed at it.
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feminism
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Hilary Mantel |
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e1e402d
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My lord, what do you call a whore when she is a knight's daughter?" "Ah," the cardinal says, entering into the problem. "To her face, 'my lady."
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Hilary Mantel |
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0915e55
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When he wakes he has to learn the lack of her all over again
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Hilary Mantel |
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ad8abdf
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The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.
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Hilary Mantel |
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2b1d829
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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.
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Hilary Mantel |
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2c42e80
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When Wyatt writes, his lines fledge feathers, and unfolding this plumage they dive below their meaning and skim above it. They tell us that the rules of power and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an ambassador or a suitor. Now, if a man's subject is deception, you are deceived if you think you grasp his meaning. You close your hand as it flies away. A s..
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Hilary Mantel |
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1595eee
|
I think, if you're going to kill a man, do it. Don't write him a letter about it. Don't bluster and threaten and put him on his guard.
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threats
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Hilary Mantel |