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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 4a2d979 | That was how I learned that no is stronger than yes. (Shostakovich already knew that.) It takes two yesses for I to become we, but only one no for we to break apart, no matter what the other party wishes. | William T. Vollmann | ||
| ffd4a4a | as he walked up past the red and green tennis courts in east Berkeley and saw the swing of the women's hair in the breeze, the crisp strokes that sent the ball over the net like a little bone-white planetoid, it occurred to him that there was still a last chance for a pair of heavenly arms to reach out to him and save him. | William T. Vollmann | ||
| 4d9d2d8 | The times are new, but the informers are old. | William T. Vollmann | ||
| 85b7adc | More aid, better directed! Couldn't we all use that? And what if the universe enacts less aid, more poorly directed? | William T. Vollmann | ||
| e5391a1 | but in 1917 we had no cares except the mundane ones of starvation and occupation and civil war, and for those of us in our armored trains traveling up and down the front waging brilliant campaigns, or for our young Natashas and Alyoshas experiencing the education and class steeling of the Komsomol for the first time, learning to ask in every historical situation: How many workers are there? how many peasants, intellectuals? how do they stan.. | William T. Vollmann | ||
| 64e1b32 | and the water and the grass and the white ripples on grey water, and white clouds among grey clouds and the wrinkled young silver skin of the water and life-bright lichens on black branches and on the still, bright river, a man and woman slowly poling their log canoe and the spiderweb (golden-green seed-wings already growing above the darker leaves of maples this early in August) and the smell of evergreens and the living grass, then the dy.. | William T. Vollmann | ||
| ea92562 | The princess] looks out and sees the humble musician with his lute. But unless the musician turns out to be a prince in disguise, this story cannot end well. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| cc5b992 | 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 | ||
| 84eb67e | 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 | Hilary Mantel | ||
| b38e8f9 | The migraine angel leaned hard on my shoulder and belched into my face. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| fde3890 | 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 | Hilary Mantel | ||
| b8f3e4d | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 3bc0ab3 | Some debts should never be tallied, he says. "I myself, I know what is owed me, but by God I know what I owe." | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 5c85ad2 | 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. | life-experience | Hilary Mantel | |
| f853be6 | There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one. --Hilary Mantel | Lawrence Freedman | ||
| e9ac54a | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 159fa02 | Let me unfold to you," he says, "the way my thoughts proceed." | Hilary Mantel | ||
| ce54c5e | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| bc234bc | 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.. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| ec31f19 | She was a bossy little woman who approached life with her elbows out. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 747096f | He thinks, tomorrow is another battle, tomorrow is another world. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 8959860 | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| cf2ab92 | What for do we nail down the dead? | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 4118396 | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 9085c0a | 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?" -- | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 0bdc3f5 | What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 354bf11 | 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? | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 3ddc86d | I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue," Camille said. "It seems so selfserving." | Hilary Mantel | ||
| b0c0475 | 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.. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 3d86d30 | 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." | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 7e1979e | 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." | french-revolution | Hilary Mantel | |
| d6dafb6 | Which of these Thomases saw the blow coming? There are moments when a memory moves right through you. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| bfbda9e | 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.. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| ebb17a2 | There's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 22f7e76 | I think the wolves all died when the great forests were cut down. That howling you hear is only the Londoners. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 4f08daa | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 9902cd8 | What does St. Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels? | Hilary Mantel | ||
| f909f00 | the wise prince is not always the most popular prince; | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 5fdfb9e | 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? | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 6f14c22 | 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.. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 6a29087 | Show me where it says, in the Bible, "Purgatory." Show me where it says "relics, monks, nuns." Show me where it says "Pope." | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 76d1cc4 | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| eef2415 | 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. | Hilary Mantel | ||
| 0a99ee3 | 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. | Hilary Mantel |