Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall Quotes
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.
Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.
His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed.
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.
He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.
When I was small I dreamed of demons. I thought they were under my bed, but you said, it can't be so, you don't get demons our side of the river, the guards won't let them over London Bridge.
It's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in street and stamped on.Pg.406
Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife?