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
I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote humorously reflects on how unconventional professions are viewed when they are commercially viable.
Hilary Mantel's quote highlights the peculiar nature of her profession as a writer where she engages with historical figures and events through her imagination and research. It points out the thin line between madness and creativity, suggesting that as long as one is compensated for their time spent on such pursuits, society tends to accept and even celebrate these eccentricities.
Themes
WritingImaginationHistoryCreativityProfession
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the creative process, I shared this quote to illustrate how writers connect with the past.
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
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.
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
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