English - Writer | July 6, 1952 -
The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth.
Hilary Mantel
TruthHistoryWinningMoreGotLess
Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.
LifeDayPurposeBookYouSometimes
Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
FearCommitmentWritingBehindLies
You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart.
HeartDarknessChildControlReading
Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.
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But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
ReadingStoryRememberJudgingEver
Novels teach you that actions have consequences. They help you grow up.
GrowHelpYouConsequencesTeachUp
There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want a normal life, you might reverse the process.
LifeProcessYouWantBecomeTell
Writers do not want to think they are less rational than other people, and at the mercy of compulsions, but in their hearts they know they are like those people who are taken for walks by their dogs, towed through hedges and ditches by an untrained sub-human energy.
PeopleEnergyThinkMercyKnowWant
Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer if they realised at the outset what the working hours were?
LifeGoodDayNightShortPossible
Novelists, it seems to me, are the very last people who should be asked to comment on the news of the day, and sooner or later, when they have been pilloried for their views, most of them recognise this.
DayPeopleMeNewsCommentLast
For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.
LifeBestToo MuchWorkingPress
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