“Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I...” — Hilary Mantel Quote

“Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.”

“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”

“Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.”

“When I wrote about the French Revolution, I didn't choose to write about aristocrats; I chose characters who began their lives in provincial obscurity.”

“My first two novels were very black comedies.”

“I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.”

“When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I'm already there.”

“As an actor, you arrive most of the time at the last minute. You arrive at the end of the process, but you don't realize it.”

“If, over time, patients don't go to some services, then progressively they become less viable, so you do arrive at a point where the conclusion is: 'These are the right services for the future, and this is capacity we don't need.'”

“When you arrive in England for football it's a paradise.”

“L.A. is so unsafe that people are actually being followed to their homes. And when they arrive at their house, criminals are following them inside.”

“Coaching changes are a part of football; they arrive ready to meet the goals they have been set, so you respect them and work with them like any other.”