Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
By the tits of Holy Agnes
Those who are made can be unmade.
Beneath every history, another history.
Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.
My first two novels were very black comedies.
My thoughts have been the thing I can rely on.
The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.
It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.
Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
History is a set of skills rather than a narrative.
Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.
I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.
Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.
Every leader operates under the threat of assassination.
Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.
A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.
I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.
For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.
[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.
God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.
If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469
Novels teach you that actions have consequences. They help you grow up.
[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.
I do myself think that history is a set of skills rather than a narrative.
I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.
There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy].
Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.
So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?
Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different.
Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.
I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
In order to successfully impersonate men, the woman [Margaret Thatcher] launched a war.
I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.
I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.
History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.
Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.
I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.
He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.
For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.
[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.
When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.
I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.
[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!
I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.
Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.
When you get fat, you get a new personality. You can't help it. Complete strangers ascribe it to you.
You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.