Fromanothershore > Fromanothershore's Quotes

“Arrange your face”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Let's say I will rip your life apart. Me and my banker friends."
How can he explain that to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from the castle walls, but from counting houses, not be the call of the bugle, but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the atteint; 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. I suppose we all have.

The king walks away towards his own rooms. Says over his shoulder, "Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“By the tits of Holy Agnes”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“By the hairy balls of Jesus”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“But my sins are my strength, he thinks; the sins I have done, that others have not even found the opportunity of committing. I hug them close; they're mine.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Oh, by the thrice-beshitten shroud of Lazarus!”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“When have I, when have I ever forced anyone to do anything, he starts to say: but Richard cuts in, "No, you don't, I agree, it's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on."
-Richard (?) nee Cromwell to Thomas Cromwell,358”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Bargain all you like. Consign yourself to the hangman if you must. The people don't give a fourpenny fuck."
512”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“If a man spoke to you in that tone, you'd invite him to step outside and ask someone to hold your coat."
378”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“He makes a gesture, designed to impersonate frankness.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Richard goes with a bob of the head but without another word. It seems he interprets 'don't tell anybody' as 'don't tell anybody but Rafe', because ten minutes later Rafe comes in, and stands looking at him, with his eyebrows raised. Red-headed people can look quite strained when they are raising eyebrows that aren't really there.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“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, yes, you've been made into a fool, but not quite in the way you thought.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“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?”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“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.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“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.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Nothing hurts, or perhaps it’s that everything hurts, because there is no separate pain that he can pick out.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“I begin to understand you.” She nods. “The blacksmith makes his own tools.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“He never lives in a single reality, but in a shifting shadow-mesh of diplomatic possibilities.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Our virtues make us; but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“...he feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational, but after all, these circumstances are extreme...”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Men, it is supposed want to pass their wisdom to their sons; he would give a great deal to protect his own son from a quartr of what he knows.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“[T]here 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.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall