Wolf Hall Quotes

#1. He would rather know what's outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is. - Thomas Cromwell - Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel

#2. I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like 'Wolf Hall,' but I'll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves.

Sue Monk Kidd

#3. I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall.

Colin Callender

#4. 'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

Hilary Mantel

#5. I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

Hilary Mantel

#6. We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.

Damian Lewis

#7. Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall,' which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#8. 'Wolf Hall' attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.

Hilary Mantel

#9. Really good 'hard' novels - say, Wolf Hall - yield, if you read them carefully, the information you need when you need it, in order to follow their paths. But there is a point at which subtle storytelling maneuvers outmaneuver their own intelligibility.

Daniel Menaker

#10. When you are a kid, a wolf is an amazing sight, so sumptuous. I sort of knew these were splendid creatures, that I was not going to find them outside roaming around. It was like a dog, but not a dog. It was incredible, a god!

Sarah Hall

#11. A grey wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream

Hilary Mantel

#12. By the tits of Holy Agnes

Hilary Mantel

#13. Good oil, like good wine, is a gift from the gods. The grape and the olive are among the priceless benefactions of the soil, and were destined, each in its way, to promote the welfare of man.

George Ellwanger

#14. For about two years, while researching 'The Wolf Border,' I was a complete wolf bore. I would regurgitate everything I was researching, whether people were interested or not.

Sarah Hall

#15. Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn't 'spiritual.' Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

Joyce Meyer

#16. Why did the reindeer fly over the mountain? Answer: Because he couldn't fly under it.

Andrew Miller

#17. By the hairy balls of Jesus

Hilary Mantel

#18. I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction.

Sarah Hall

#19. Lonely? Yes. But a solemn, brooding, tragic loneliness that a man hates with a passion - and yet loves so much he craves for more.

George R R Martin

#20. It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

Stephen King

#21. We all have our preferences - some people go for birds - but for me, there's just something about the wolf; the design of it is really aesthetically pleasing.

Sarah Hall

#22. If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.

Oprah Winfrey

#23. Pens carry further than rifled cannon.

Bayard Taylor

#24. The Chin have held us down for a long time, but that is over. We ride to war, brother.

Conn Iggulden

#25. To the left, just past the painting, on the other side of the hall, is the bathroom, the sort of open door that if cameras found it as they passed through the house in a horror movie would trigger a blast of synthesizers.

John Darnielle

#26. Be reasonable, my lord. Once you.ve done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes. And your father has other work in mind for you.
pg.480

Hilary Mantel

#27. It's not about winning. It's the enjoyment of doing it - it gets your brain going.

Christopher Lasch

#28. You know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you will feel her lash: you always, he never.
One day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up and see him thundering downhill.
pg. 495

Hilary Mantel

#29. So the Wolf had killed a time or two. Big deal. He was a wolf! What did they expect? That he'd lick his balls all day and howl at the moon?

Marie Hall

#30. Henry stirs into life. 'Do I retain you for what is easy? Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.'
pg. 585

Hilary Mantel

#31. The two men were greedily hunched over the table, like two wolves disputing a carcass, but their muttered speech in the echoing hall resembled more the grunting of pigs. One was less than a wolf: he was a public prosecutor. The other was more than a pig, he was a chief commissioner of police.

Jan Neruda

#32. Precious Savior, why do I fear your scrutiny? Yours is an examen of love. Still, I am afraid ... afraid of what may surface. Even so, I invite you to search me to the depths so that I may know myself - and you - in fuller measure. - Amen.

Richard J. Foster

#33. Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.

Benjamin Franklin