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
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Laws are impactful words that require belief to be effective.
This quote emphasizes the significance of language in the creation of laws, comparing legal writing to the casting of spells. Just as spells require belief to manifest their power, laws rely on societal belief and acceptance to enact real change in the world, highlighting the profound relationship between words, authority, and action.
Themes
LawsWordsPowerBeliefLanguage
In practice
Example use cases
A lawyer could use this quote to illustrate the importance of precise language in legal documents during a presentation.
More from Hilary Mantel
All quotes →History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
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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.
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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.
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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
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