Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. Hilary Mantel More Quotes by Hilary Mantel More Quotes From Hilary Mantel If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Hilary Mantel party exercise sleep You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws. Hilary Mantel kings ears thinking I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories. Hilary Mantel grandmother memories children Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins. Hilary Mantel cities sweet lying But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it. Hilary Mantel reading judging self You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear. Hilary Mantel goes-on long years I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel. Hilary Mantel linear novel writing Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep. Hilary Mantel notebook half moving Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts. Hilary Mantel select shapes people People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with. Hilary Mantel minorities asking people When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen. Hilary Mantel paper writing wind Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds. Hilary Mantel different people world Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart. Hilary Mantel sometimes war looks It was a very funny conference. I knew [Christopher Hitchens] before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It's alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn't feel neglected! Hilary Mantel angel eye moving I used to think that when I set out that doing the research was enough! But then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by the imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you. Hilary Mantel procrastination imagination thinking The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh. Hilary Mantel fate flower men If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back. Hilary Mantel writing morning book To a Brit of my generation, one of the most objectionable things about [Margaret] Thatcher is her falsity. She is a total construct. For one thing, she had a made-over accent. Hilary Mantel accents generations made Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories. Hilary Mantel good-story stories lying I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography. Hilary Mantel historian rivals biographies
