Hilary Mantel Quotes

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

Writing history takes a great deal of imagination. I don’t mean making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself to another time.

I've always been a history buff. It was one of the few subjects at school that really, really caught me. I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is.

Leave history to historians.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources.

Historians are not good at hypothetical questions.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

If you read any of my books, they tend to have a strong historical perspective.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.

In writing my historical novels, I have to rely upon my imagination to a great extent. I think of it as 'filling in the blanks.' Medieval chroniclers could be callously indifferent to the needs of future novelists. But I think there is a great difference between filling in the blanks and distorting known facts.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.

I'm a historian in my own mind.

As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.

It's interesting because I haven't done a lot of period work in the past, but I always wanted to because I'm interested in history.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.