The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
Hilary MantelRead
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on our tendency to cling to past hardships and pride ourselves on enduring them, questioning the rationale behind such attachments.
Hilary Mantel's quote invites us to examine our relationship with the past and the difficulties we have endured. She challenges the notion of pride in our struggles, suggesting that such attachments may be misplaced since our challenges were often beyond our control. By invoking everyday hardships, Mantel encourages reflection on how much we allow our histories to dictate our identities and self-worth, and whether it is truly beneficial to hold onto these narratives of suffering.
Themes
PastPrideSufferingIdentityEndurance
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about overcoming challenges, one might say, 'As Hilary Mantel reflects, we must not let our past hardships define our present.'
More from Hilary Mantel
All quotes →History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
Hilary MantelRead
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
Hilary MantelRead
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary MantelRead
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Hilary MantelRead
You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart.
Hilary MantelRead
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