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4133470
|
And your man?' He hesitates. 'Long dead too?' It is the most delicate way that can be contrived, to ask a man if he has killed someone.
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Hilary Mantel |
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3b220eb
|
We don't have to invite pain in, he thinks. It's waiting for us: sooner rather than later.
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Hilary Mantel |
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4b6302a
|
Illness strips you back to an authentic self, but not one you need to meet. Too much is claimed for authenticity. Painfully we learn to live in the world, and to be false. Then all our defences are knocked down in one sweep. In sickness we can't avoid knowing about our body and what it does, its animal aspect, its demands. We see things that never should be seen; our inside is outside, the body's sewer pipes and vaults exposed to view, as i..
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Hilary Mantel |
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62ac3b0
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Fabre looked up, his mobile face composed. "Good-bye," he said. "Georges-Jacques--study law. Law is a weapon."
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Hilary Mantel |
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1ee45bf
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A decade of self-aggrandisement, since his daughter flashed her cunny at the king, has made Boleyn rich and settled and confident.
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Hilary Mantel |
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78ed1b1
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At least, he thinks, the fellow has the wit to see what this is about: not one year's grudge or two, but a fat extract from the book of grief, kept since the cardinal came down. He says, 'Life pays you out, Norris. Don't you find?
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Hilary Mantel |
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04450f4
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there are liasons which would put yours in the shade...
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Hilary Mantel |
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dc26838
|
He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, "Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion?" A silence. After a while, Thurston proffers, "At this moment, master, I would have to say..."
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humor
knives
murder
murderers
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Hilary Mantel |
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255d1ae
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We may be tainted with pragmatism, but it only needs a clash of personalities to remind us of our principles.
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Hilary Mantel |
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22e4b50
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Todos os rios correm para o mar, e o mar nao se enche.
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Hilary Mantel |
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466be94
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But chivalry's day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys.
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Hilary Mantel |
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2762356
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He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.
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gender-stereotypes
humorous
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Hilary Mantel |
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7a8b312
|
Why would I trust a man with my business, if he could not manage his own?
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Hilary Mantel |
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c09c6a8
|
Straight is the line of Duty, Curved is the line of Beauty, Follow the straight line, thou shall see. The curved line ever follow thee.
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Hilary Mantel |
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9c5c2e1
|
Do you know you can learn from pain?' But, he explains, the circumstances must be right. To learn, you must have a future:
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Hilary Mantel |
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7a57adc
|
The prose," Robespierre said. "It's so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style."
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Hilary Mantel |
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25045bb
|
There is no need for unanimity," Saint- Just said. "It would have been desirable, but let's get on. There are only two signatures wanting, I think, besides those who have refused. Citizen Lacoste, you next-- then be so good as to put the paper in front of Citizen Robespierre, and move the ink a little nearer."
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Hilary Mantel |
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028a15a
|
When Gregory says, 'Are they guilty?' he means, 'Did they do it?' But when he says, 'Are they guilty?' he means, 'Did the court find them so?' The lawyer's world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.
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lawyer
perspective
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Hilary Mantel |
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1c2e06e
|
My migraine aura was now so severe that the world on the left had ceased to exist, except as an intermittent yellow flash.
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Hilary Mantel |
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86a9e3e
|
The lawyer's world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.
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lawyers
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Hilary Mantel |
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1b3fc06
|
He told me that you had a loathing of those in the religious life. That was why he found you diligent in his work." "That was not the reason." He looks up. "May I speak?" "Oh, for God's sake," Henry cries. "I wish someone would." He is startled. Then he understands. Henry wants a conversation, on any topic. One that's nothing to do with love, or hunting, or war. Now that Wolsey's gone, there's not much scope for it; unless you want to talk ..
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Hilary Mantel |
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d840009
|
I don't grudge them some bodily comforts. It cannot always be Lent. What I cannot stomach is hypocrisy, fraud, idleness--their worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of invention. When did anything good last come from a monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and what they repeat is corrupt. For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do n..
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Hilary Mantel |
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3714af4
|
One fear creates a dereliction, the offense brings on a greater fear, and there comes a point where the fear is too great and the human spirit just gives up and a child wanders off numb and directionless and ends up following a crowd and watching a killing.
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Hilary Mantel |
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baf0617
|
My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bag full of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes. What are the chances you will pull out the eel?
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marriage-advice
thomas-more
wives
women
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Hilary Mantel |
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a887d0b
|
The king takes a deep ragged breath. He's been shouting. Now - and it's a narrow thing - he decides to laugh. 'You advocate prudence. Prudence is a virtue. But there are other virtues that belong to princes.' 'Fortitude.' 'Yes. Cost that out.' 'It doesn't mean courage in battle.' 'Do you read me a lesson?' 'It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.
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Hilary Mantel |
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6a84ed8
|
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.
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prose
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Hilary Mantel |
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68ebe9a
|
the lawyers' saying 'Le mort saisit le vif'? The dead grip the living. The prince dies but his power passes at the moment of his death, there is no lapse, no interregnum
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Hilary Mantel |
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3f00f21
|
He had meant to write to Gregory and say, I have seen such a sweet girl, I will find out who she is and, if I steer our family adroitly in the next few years, perhaps you can marry her. He has not written this. In his present precarious situation, it would be about as useful as the letters Gregory used to write to him: Dear father, I hope you are well. I hope your dog is well. And now no more for lack of time.
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Hilary Mantel |
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d02e6a6
|
As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life. pg.404
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martyrs
thomas-more
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Hilary Mantel |
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e3aa003
|
If all the old stories are to be believed, and some people, let us remember, do believe them, then our king is one part bastard archer, one part hidden serpent, one part Welsh, and all of him in debt to the Italian banks
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Hilary Mantel |
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0b34dab
|
He cannot lock us all up." "He has prisons enough." "For bodies, yes. But what are bodies? He can take our goods, but God will prosper us. He can close the booksellers, but still there will be books. They have their old bones, their glass saints in windows, their candles and shrines, but God has given us the printing press."
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Hilary Mantel |
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002bfe3
|
We shall have to develop a hand signal for "Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter." He is surprised the Italians have not done it."
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Hilary Mantel |
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c9f1249
|
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."
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Hilary Mantel |
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e31fa9f
|
The Revolution has got frozen up. They have frozen it up with their talk of moderation. To stand still in Revolution is to slip backwards.
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Hilary Mantel |
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5c2d3ae
|
Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in '91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me." He shook his head. "This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can't carry his country on the soles of his shoes."
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patriotism
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Hilary Mantel |
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7148096
|
Queen Katherine, whose boys have all died, takes it patiently: that is to say, she suffers.
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an-occult-history-of-britain
miscarriages
queen-katherine-of-aragon
stillbirth
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Hilary Mantel |
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c373359
|
Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.
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fantasy
henry-viii
spring-dec-1530
thomas-cromwell
truth
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Hilary Mantel |
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a025db2
|
We make great progress only at those times when we become melancholy--at those times when, discontented with the real world, we are forced to make for ourselves one more bearable. "The Theory of Ambition," an essay: JEAN-MARIE HERAULT DE SECHELLES"
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Hilary Mantel |
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e636b9f
|
He is tired out from the effort of deciphering the world. Tired from the effort of smiling at the foe.
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Hilary Mantel |
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368d9c1
|
I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.
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Hilary Mantel |
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8926eea
|
The multitude 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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132cfb0
|
Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.
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Hilary Mantel |
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0f1f1a3
|
he takes as his text and example the unfortunate Ahab, seventh king of Israel, who lived in a palace of ivory. Under the influence of the wicked Jezebel he built a pagan temple and gave the priests of Baal places in his retinue. The prophet Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered. The dogs of Samaria licked Ahab's blood. All his male..
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Hilary Mantel |
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f866fc5
|
He looks down at them and arranges his face. Erasmus says that you must do this each morning before you leave your house: "put on a mask, as it were."
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Hilary Mantel |