Hilary Mantel Quotes

I don’t suppose she would be a bad wife, for somebody who was prepared to keep her chained to the wall.

Oh, you are not disappointing," Henry says. "But the moment you are, I will let you know.

The king laughs. “Why would I trust a man with my business, if he could not manage his own?”

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn’t matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It’s the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say.

Why do I feel I have heard this story before? She has a flock of monks and priests about her, who directed the people’s eyes heavenward while picking their pockets.

Anne says, “I am Jezebel. You, Thomas Cromwell, are the priests of Baal.” Her eyes are alight. “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.”

The cardinal used to say, the English will forgive a king anything, until he tries to tax them.

But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

One tradesman the same as the next? Not in the real world. Any man with a steady hand and a cleaver can call himself a butcher: but without the smith, where does he get that cleaver? Without the man who works in metal, where are your hammers, your scythes, your sickles, scissors and planes? Your arms and armor, your arrowheads, your pikes and your guns? Where are your ships at sea and their anchors? Where are your grappling hooks, your nails, latches, hinges, pokers and tongs? Where are your spits, kettles, trivets, your harness rings, buckles and bits? Where are your knives?

She is selling herself by the inch. The gentlemen all say you are advising her. She wants a present in cash for every advance above her knee."
"Not like you, Mary. One push backward and, good girl, here's your fourpence."
"Well. You know. If kings are doing the pushing." She laughs. "Anne has very long legs. By the time he comes to her secret part he will be bankrupt. The French wars will be cheap, in comparison.

Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.

The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.

What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.

And I suppose the cardinal might send him a present for his trouble. Some money, I mean. Our aunt Mercy says that the pope does nothing except on cash terms.