English - Writer | July 6, 1952 -
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
ChangeCharacterStepWorldEnergy
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.
MusicWalkWordsSleepPeopleYou
Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.
WinterMyselfMeBookThoughtHouse
Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.
PeopleDifferentLikeWriterBetween
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
KnowledgeHistoryExperiencePresent
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.
LifeSweetWorldThinkFactsHoney
History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
HistoryTimePastChangesAlwaysUs
What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don't know which bits are true.
EducationFeelKnowTrueHistorical
I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.
AgeBagCryMiddleJustStill
I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.
TimeSchoolBookLibraryLyingSee
I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.
GoodMountainsLawyerThinkSense
I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.
CareerPartyNeverDisasterLine
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