A Quote by Hilary Mantel

When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn't feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic. The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn't one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not.

Hilary Mantel

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Before Being Books Britain Came Catholic Center Coming Cradle Cromwell Decided Else England English English History Extraction Feel Felt Grew Grew Up Ground Had History I Moved On Image Irish March Mine Moved Moved On Never Northern Occupy Official Onto Particularly Postcards Somewhere Somewhere Else Thomas Up Visited Whether Write

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Hilary Mantel
English - Writer
Born: July 6, 1952

The first time I stepped onto the rooftop of the Potala Palace in Lhasa in 1985, I felt, as never before or since, as if I was stepping onto the rooftop of my being: onto some dimension of consciousness that I'd never visited before.

Pico Iyer

I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland.

Richard Russo

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.

Kazuo Ishiguro

I guess it's interesting traveling, for me, because I never in my life until doing this felt a sense of being from anywhere particularly, whereas now I do feel quite European. Even if we don't get up to England, if we're in France or somewhere like that, it feels more like going back somewhere familiar - more than even America, where we share a lot of cultural stuff.

Will Farquarson

'A Naval History of Britain' which begins in the 7th century has to explain what it means by Britain. My meaning is simply the British Isles as a whole, but not any particular nation or state or our own day... 'Britain' is not a perfect word for this purpose, but 'Britain and Ireland' would be both cumbersome and misleading, implying an equality of treatment which is not possible. Ireland and the Irish figure often in this book, but Irish naval history, in the sense of the history of Irish fleets, is largely a history of what might have been rather than what actually happened.

Nicholas Rodger

I've always tried to write California history as American history. The paradox is that New England history is by definition national history, Mid-Atlantic history is national history. We're still suffering from that.

Kevin Starr

I grew up in a brick house. What's wrong with bricks? An Englishman took me aside and said, "You have to understand, all the bricklayers in England are Irish, and the English hate the Irish."

Carl Andre

When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.

Nicolas Cage

On dispersive ground, therefore, fight not. On facile ground, halt not. On contentious ground, attack not. On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way. On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your allies. On serious ground, gather in plunder. In difficult ground, keep steadily on the march. On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem. On desperate ground, fight.

Sun Tzu

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Alan Bradley

Out of the chaos of post-Roman Dark Age Britain, the English had created the world's first nation-state: One king, one country, one church, one currency, one language and a single unified representative national administration. Never again in England would sovereignty descend to the merely regional level. Never again would the idea of England and the unity of England ever be challenged.

David Starkey

I lived in England to learn English. When I went to England for the first time, it was like being on the Moon. I had no friends, I couldn't speak the language. I was very isolated.

Jean Alesi

I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English.

Dave Gibbons

The place where I grew up is the center of surfing. Everyone who grows up on the North Shore surfs, and from October to March, you have the best waves in the world within a 5- to 7-mile stretch. I grew up in the center of these incredible sunsets and all these incredible waves. And then we have the Triple Crown of Surfing.

John John Florence

It felt like being in the center of the world, and I felt like I was a witness to history and I knew that the whole world was watching on television. So, I could feel the collective consciousness of the world focused on this little strip of land called Seattle.

Krist Novoselic

It's funny because when you're a Welshman living in England, you always get the mickey taken out of you for being Welsh, and then when you go to Wales with an English accent because you were born in Bristol and grew up in Birmingham, they say you're English. You can never win.

Gwilym Lee

A Quote by Hilary Mantel

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