Sometimes people ask, 'Does writing make you happy?' But I think that's beside the point. It makes you agitated, and continually in a state where you're off balance. You seldom feel serene or settled.

Hilary Mantel

Categorized in : You Feel People Happy

I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are, and to look where things have gone missing.

great look time people

Since I was a very small child, I've had a kind of reverence for the past, and I felt a very intimate connection with it.

connection small child past

My first two novels were very black comedies. by Hilary Mantel

My first two novels were very black comedies.

first very black two

My thoughts have been the thing I can rely on. by Hilary Mantel

My thoughts have been the thing I can rely on.

thoughts been rely i-can

I think if I hadn't become a writer I would just have suppressed that part of my personality. I think I would have put it in a box that I never opened.

never just think personality