Alina Bu

“Why is it always little legs that have to save big legs? Just run upstairs and fetch me .......
It flattered you, when you were young. You thought you were important, indeed essential. He used to hurtle around Putney, on errands for Walter. More fool him.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Seven Wise Men, he tells Gregory: here are their sayings. Moderation in all things, nothing to excess (those two are the same, wisdom can be repetitious). Know yourself. Know your opportunity. Look ahead. Don’t try for the impossible. And Bias of Priene: pleistoi anthropoi kakoi, most men are bad.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“He admires these speculative worlds, that grow up in the crevices between truths.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“What is a woman’s life? Do not think, because she is not a man, she does not fight. The bedchamber is her tilting ground, where she shows her colours, and her theatre of war is the sealed room where she gives birth. She knows she may not come alive out of that bloody chamber. Before her lying-in, if she is prudent, she settles her affairs. If she dies, she will be lamented and forgotten. If the child dies, she will be blamed. If she lives, she must hide her wounds. Her injuries are secret, and her sisters talk about them behind the hand. It is Eve’s sin, the long continuing punishment it incurred, that tears at her from the inside and shreds her. Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth. If she seems so injured that she can have no more children, we commiserate with her husband.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light