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The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it’s so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for “Back off, our prince is fucking this man’s daughter.” He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.

— Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (2009)

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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.

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

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

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

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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.