The Mirror & the Light Quotes

“This is what life does for you in the end; it arranges a fight you can't win.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“That's the point of a promise, he thinks. It wouldn't have any value, if you could see what it would cost you when you made it.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“But if you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious act and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“We are all dying, just at different speeds.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“It was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“If you marvel at your good fortune, you should marvel in secret: never let people see you.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“What is a woman’s life? Do not think, because she is not a man, she does not fight. The bedchamber is her tilting ground, where she shows her colours, and her theatre of war is the sealed room where she gives birth. She knows she may not come alive out of that bloody chamber. Before her lying-in, if she is prudent, she settles her affairs. If she dies, she will be lamented and forgotten. If the child dies, she will be blamed. If she lives, she must hide her wounds. Her injuries are secret, and her sisters talk about them behind the hand. It is Eve’s sin, the long continuing punishment it incurred, that tears at her from the inside and shreds her. Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth. If she seems so injured that she can have no more children, we commiserate with her husband.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“What can you do but, as Cicero says, live hopefully, die bravely?”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“is a prince even human? If you add him up, does the total make a man? He is made of shards and broken fragments of the past, of prophecies and of the dreams of his ancestral line. The tides of history break inside him, their current threatens to carry him away. His blood is not his own, but ancient blood.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Everybody wants something, if only for the pain to stop.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Now, sensing that he has less than a week to live, he must pick up his images from where he has left them, walking his own inner terrain. . . He must traverse his whole life, waking and sleeping: you cannot leave your memories alone in this world, for other men to own.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Those who think a heart cannot break have led blessed and sheltered lives.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“The king believes that even if he were not king, he would still be a great man. This is because God likes him. He needs to be liked and he needs to be right. But above all he needs to be listened to, with very close attention. Never enter a contest of wills with the king. Do not flatter him. Instead, give him something he can take credit for. Ask him questions to which you know the answers. Do not ask him the other sort of question.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“It is not written that great men shall be happy men. It is nowhere recorded that the rewards of public office include a quiet mind. He sits in Whitehall, the year folding around him, aware of the shadow of his hand as it moves across the paper, his own inconcealable fist; and in the quiet of the house, he can hear the soft whispering of his quill, as if his writing is talking back to him. Can you make a new England? You can write a new story. You can write new texts and destroy the old ones, set the torn leaves of Duns Scotus sailing about the quadrangles, and place the gospels in every church. You can write on England, but what was written before keeps showing through, inscribed on the rocks and carried on floodwater, surfacing from deep cold wells. It’s not just the saints and martyrs who claim the country, it’s those who came before them: the dwarves dug into ditches, the sprites who sing in the breeze, the demons bricked into culverts and buried under bridges; the bones under your floor. You cannot tax them or count them. They have lasted ten thousand years and ten thousand before that. They are not easily dispossessed by farmers with fresh leases and law clerks who adduce proof of title. They bubble out of the ground, wear away the shoreline, sow weeds among the crops and erode the workings of mines.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“The king never does an upleasent thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“He admires these speculative worlds, that grow up in the crevices between truths.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“No. I am not sad. I am not allowed to be. I am too useful to be sad.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“It's always the wrong bits of the past people want back.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“He thinks, the cardinal would have known how best to manage this. Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away. A sharp pang of appetite reminds him that it is time for a second breakfast, or perhaps an early dinner. The morning’s circumstances are new and there are no rules to guide us. The witnesses, who have knelt for the passing of the soul, stand up and put on their hats. Under the hats, their faces are stunned.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Seven Wise Men, he tells Gregory: here are their sayings. Moderation in all things, nothing to excess (those two are the same, wisdom can be repetitious). Know yourself. Know your opportunity. Look ahead. Don’t try for the impossible. And Bias of Priene: pleistoi anthropoi kakoi, most men are bad.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“In Italy you learned cunning, but in Antwerp, flexibility. And besides, the shopping! Just step out of your door and you can get a diamond or a broom, you can get knives, candlesticks and keys, ironwork to suit the expert eye. They make soap and glass, they cure fish and they deal in alum and promissory notes. You can buy pepper and ginger, aniseed and cumin, saffron and rice, almonds and figs; you can buy vats and pots, combs and mirrors, cotton and silk, aloes and myrrh.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“I urge you both, undertake no course without deep thought: but learn to think very fast.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“If kings do not see you, they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“I believe, but I do not believe enough.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Sometimes it is years before we can see who are the heroes in an affair and who are the victims.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“It is not written that great men shall be happy men.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“They say Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light