Skip to content

All the same: in the village alehouses up and down England, they are blaming the king and Anne Boleyn for the weather: the concubine, the great whore. If the king would take back his lawful wife Katherine, the rain would stop. And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?

— Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies (2012)

Another quote →

More quotes by Hilary Mantel

He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.

Wolf Hall (2009)

It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.

Wolf Hall (2009)

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

Wolf Hall (2009)

All Hilary Mantel quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hilary Mantel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.