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84eb67e
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Intrigue feeds on itself; conspiracies have neither mother nor father, and yet they thrive: the only thing to know is that no one knows anything. Though
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Hilary Mantel |
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b38e8f9
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The migraine angel leaned hard on my shoulder and belched into my face.
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Hilary Mantel |
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fde3890
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So often in council he has taken Katherine's part, as if he were one of her appointed lawyers. 'You make this argument, my lords,' he has said, 'but the dowager princess will allege...' And 'Katherine will refute you, thus.' Not because he favours her cause but because it saves time; as her opponent, he enters into her concerns, he judges her stratagems, he reaches every point before she does. It
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Hilary Mantel |
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b8f3e4d
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Some would think that it ought to come in the course of nature to a woman of thirty-six, a wife and mother. A little calm, a little quiet within - little chance. Even after childbearing, there is blood in your veins, not milk.
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Hilary Mantel |
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3bc0ab3
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Some debts should never be tallied, he says. "I myself, I know what is owed me, but by God I know what I owe."
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Hilary Mantel |
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5c85ad2
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The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.
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life-experience
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Hilary Mantel |
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e9ac54a
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we are not priests. We don't want their sort of confession. We are lawyers. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use.
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Hilary Mantel |
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159fa02
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Let me unfold to you," he says, "the way my thoughts proceed."
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Hilary Mantel |
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ce54c5e
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Statements, indictments, bills are circulated, shuffled between judges, prosecutors, the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor's office; each step in the process clear, logical, and designed to create corpses by due process of law.
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Hilary Mantel |
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bc234bc
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But Parliament cannot see how it is the state's job to create work. Are not these matters in God's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order? To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve. If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it; for God knows his trade. It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay..
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Hilary Mantel |
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ec31f19
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She was a bossy little woman who approached life with her elbows out.
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Hilary Mantel |
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747096f
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He thinks, tomorrow is another battle, tomorrow is another world.
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Hilary Mantel |
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8959860
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It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.
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Hilary Mantel |
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cf2ab92
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What for do we nail down the dead?
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Hilary Mantel |
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4118396
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The cardinal used to say, Cromewll will do in a week what will take another man a year, it is not worth your while to block him or oppose him. If you reach out to grip him he will not be there, he will have ridden twenty miles while you are pulling your boots on.
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Hilary Mantel |
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9085c0a
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Henry glares at him. "I will say this for you. You stick by your man." "I have never had anything from the cardinal other than kindness. Why would I not?" --
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Hilary Mantel |
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0bdc3f5
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What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.
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Hilary Mantel |
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354bf11
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Cromwell, suppose you'd been away from England for seven years? If you'd been like a knight in a story, lying under an enchantment? You would look around you and wonder, who are they, these people?
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Hilary Mantel |
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3ddc86d
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I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue," Camille said. "It seems so selfserving."
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Hilary Mantel |
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b0c0475
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Camille said, "Your trouble is, you're backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which is it, which is it to be? No, don't answer. And will there be an inquiry into the cause of these riots? No. A few people will be hanged, that's all. Why? Because nobody dares to ask what happened--not Louis, not Necker, not even the Duke himsel..
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Hilary Mantel |
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3d86d30
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One never anticipated the scale of it," Brissot whispered. "It was planned, yes, and people were paid--but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves." "And that upsets your plans?" "They have to be directed." Brissot shook his head. "We don't want anarchy."
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Hilary Mantel |
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7e1979e
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Vadier (on Danton): "We'll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end." Danton (on Vadier): "Vadier? I'll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in."
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french-revolution
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Hilary Mantel |
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d6dafb6
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Which of these Thomases saw the blow coming? There are moments when a memory moves right through you.
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Hilary Mantel |
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bfbda9e
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In the Convention tomorrow I shall put him up to confront Saint-Just. Imagine it. Our man the picture of starched rectitude, and looking as if he has just devoured a beefsteak; and Camille making a joke or two at our man's expense and then talking about '89. A cheap trick, but the galleries will cheer. This will make Saint-Just lose his temper-not easy, since he cultivates this Greek statue manner of his--but I guarantee that Camille can do..
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Hilary Mantel |
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ebb17a2
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There's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.
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Hilary Mantel |
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22f7e76
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I think the wolves all died when the great forests were cut down. That howling you hear is only the Londoners.
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Hilary Mantel |
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4f08daa
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There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn't. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
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Hilary Mantel |
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9902cd8
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What does St. Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels?
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Hilary Mantel |
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f909f00
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the wise prince is not always the most popular prince;
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Hilary Mantel |
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5fdfb9e
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In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue, for irreverance to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?
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Hilary Mantel |
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6f14c22
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news, he formulates his denial, for whom it may concern: "His Grace the cardinal wholly rejects any imputation that he has sent an evil spirit to wait upon the Duke of Norfolk. He deprecates the suggestion in the strongest possible terms. No headless calf, no fallen angel in the shape of loll-tongued dog, no crawling pre-used winding-sheet, no Lazarus or animated cadaver has been sent by His Grace to pursue His Grace: nor is any such pursui..
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Hilary Mantel |
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6a29087
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Show me where it says, in the Bible, "Purgatory." Show me where it says "relics, monks, nuns." Show me where it says "Pope."
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Hilary Mantel |
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76d1cc4
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they were intent on framing a 'Declaration of the Rights of Man'. Some were heard to mutter that the Assembly should write the constitution first, since rights exist in virtue of laws, but jurisprudence is such a dull subject, and liberty so exciting.
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Hilary Mantel |
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eef2415
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He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made, no one could circulate their words in a printed book or bill, because printed books were not thought of. He feels a moment of jealousy toward the dead, to those who served kings in slower times than these; nowadays the products of some bought or poisoned brain can be disseminated through Europe in a month.
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Hilary Mantel |
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0a99ee3
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I was just going over London Bridge and I saw someone had attacked the Madonna's statue. Knocked off the baby's head.' 'That was done a while back. It would be that devil Cranmer. You know what he is when he's taken a drink.
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Hilary Mantel |
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a2c74dc
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And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and ducks' bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and ..
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Hilary Mantel |
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39134d8
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We passed the Irish club, and the florist's with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called 'Elvina's', which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner's - or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked root..
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Hilary Mantel |
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71fb474
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I wonder what I've married into," Morgan Williams says. But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual sniffle, some women have a headache, and Morgan has this wonder."
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Hilary Mantel |
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dd7693c
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It is a wan morning, low unbroken cloud; the light, filtering sparely through glass, is the color of tarnished pewter. How brightly colored the king is, like the king in a new pack of cards: how small his flat blue eye. There
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Hilary Mantel |
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1e2de1d
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One of the French lords says, "To lose gracefully is an art that every gentleman cultivates." "I hope to cultivate it too," he says. "If you see an example I might follow, please point it out."
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Hilary Mantel |
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3865944
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The king is good to those who think him good.
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Hilary Mantel |
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f6f5ff0
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it's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow.
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Hilary Mantel |
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8a90db8
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Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read, and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.
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Hilary Mantel |
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d641b46
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He would have explained, if he'd known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day? He said, "I found an easier way to be."
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Hilary Mantel |