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"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."
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"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual."

"Unless you stop him. Perhaps next we meet.""You'll be just as annoying?" I guessed.He fixed my with those warm brown eyes. "Or perhaps you could bring me up to speed on those modern courtship rituals."I sat there stunned until he gave me a glimpse of a smile-just enough to let me know he was teasing. Then he disappeared."Oh, very funny!" I yelled."

"The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits."

"D'yer see it? This finger, laddie, could send ye to meet yer Maker!Sgt. Deisenburger stared at the black and purple nail a few inches from his face. As an offensive weapon it rated quite highly, especially if it was ever used in the preparation of food."

"Showing off is more ridiculous in instances where the thing that is being shown off was bought on credit."

"It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?""Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund."

"Hey, guard! Ian hollered out loud. "Do you think we could get a bathroom break? The guard seemed to snicker as he pointed to the grass outside the cell. Eena smirked at how dead-on her thoughts had been after all. "Come on, Ian complained. "She can't do that, she's a girl. The soldier smiled wryly, a shrug communicating his indifference. Eena laughed in her mind. (I don't know what you think's so funny. You're the one who's gotta pee.) Oddly enough, that fact just made her laugh even more."

"I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a damp square of cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er ... what is it?'ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.'Oh ...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah...'IT WAS NOT AT ALL COOPERATIVE.'Really ...?'IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL."

"I used to think that size does not count, until I realized that most people either find other people's faeces more disgusting than a bird's droppings, or they do not find the latter disgusting at all."
Explore more quotes by Hilary Mantel


"There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing."


"Do you look like the photograph on your book jackets? Authors, I find, seldom do."


"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."


"The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had ordered three weeks ago. Each day, some further evidence of a task half finished, a scheme incomplete. He found a novel, with her place marked.And this is it."


"For I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood."


"His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed."


"This revolution - will it be a living?''We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.''Is that usual?''Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases."


"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."


"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."
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