Bring Up the Bodies Quotes

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Those who are made can be unmade.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'"
“He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Once he had watched Liz making a silk braid. One end was pinned to the wall and on each finger of her raised hands she was spinning loops of thread, her fingers flying so fast he couldn’t see how it worked. ‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Rafe asks him, could the king's freedom be obtained, sir, with more economy of means? Less bloodshed?

Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, one you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“...an elegant woman, with a refinement that makes mere prettiness seem redundant.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Edward Seymour says, ‘You should have been a bishop, Cromwell.’
‘Edward,’ he says, ‘I should have been Pope.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“When Wyatt writes, his lines fledge feathers, and unfolding this plumage they dive below their meaning and skim above it. They tell us that the rules of power and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an ambassador or a suitor. Now, if a man's subject is deception, you are deceived if you think you grasp his meaning. You close your hand as it flies away. A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“...this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“God knows our hearts. There is no need for an idle formula or an intermediary. No need for language either: God is beyond translation.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged somewhere, he will batter down your door, walks in and wipes his boots on you.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“He doesn't believe the dead need our prayers, nor can they use them. But anyone who knows the Bible as he does, knows that our God is a capricious God, and there's no harm in hedging your bets.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“...there are liasons which would put yours in the shade...”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

“They claim they're living the vita apostolica; but you didn't find the apostles feeling each other's bollocks.”
― Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies