English - Writer | July 6, 1952 -
I once dreamed a whole short story. Wrapped in its peculiar atmosphere, as if draped in clouds, I walked entranced to my desk at about 4 A.M. and typed it on to the screen.
Hilary Mantel
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My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.
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The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
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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.
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If you skew the endocrine system, you lose the pathways to self. When endocrine patterns change, it alters the way you think and feel. One shift in the pattern tends to trip another.
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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.
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What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different.
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When you get fat, you get a new personality. You can't help it. Complete strangers ascribe it to you.
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I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
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Like many people, I am addicted to the physical act of reading.
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Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.
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I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
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