what I'm reading: some great quotes from Wolf Hall

Here are a few final quotes from Wolf Hall to whet your appetite.
It opens brutally:

'So now get up.'
Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned toward the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.
Blood from the gash on his head—which was his father's first effort—is trickling across his face. Add to this, his left eye is blinded; but if he squints sideways, with his right eye he can see that the stitching of his father's boot is unraveling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather, and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut.

continues gloriously:

He remembers one night in summer when the footballers had stood silent, looking up. It was dusk. The note from a single recorder wavered in the air, thin and piercing. A blackbird picked up the note, and sang from a bush by the water gate. A boatman whistled back from the river.

and includes insights like this (the 'king' is Henry VIII, pining for Anne Boleyn).

After dark the king is sick with love. He is melancholy, sometimes unreachable. He drinks and sleeps heavily, sleeps alone; he wakes, and because he is a strong man and a young man still he is optimistic, clear-headed, ready for a new day. In daylight, his cause is hopeful.

Oh, for the glories of youthful sleep!

From Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, pages 3, 116, 120.

what I'm reading: 'the story is much bigger' from Wolf Hall

I easily forget what it means to have the Bible in my own language. Hilary Mantel writes about a time when the Bible became available to ordinary people in 16th century England (the 'he' is Thomas Cromwell):

The London gardens are bright with berries. There is an obdurate winter ahead. But he feels a force ready to break, as spring breaks from the dead tree. As the word of God spreads, the people’s eyes are opened to new truths. Until now, like Helen Barre, they knew Noah and the Flood, but not St Paul. They could count over the sorrows of our Blessed Mother, and say how the damned are carried down to Hell. But they did not know the manifold miracles and sayings of Christ, nor the words and deeds of the apostles, simple men who, like the poor of London, pursued simple wordless trades. The story is much bigger than they ever thought it was.

He says to his nephew Richard, you cannot tell people just part of the tale and then stop, or just tell them the parts you choose. They have seen their religion painted on the walls of churches, or carved in stone, but now God’s pen is poised, and he is ready to write his words in the books of their hearts.

From Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, p. 515-6.

what I'm reading: 'I cannot unlive my life' from Wolf Hall

Protestant writer and theologian John Frith has been condemned to die for his faith. Thomas Cromwell - ever the pragmatist, though sympathetic to the reformers - is trying to convince him to recant:

'They will burn you.'

'And you think I cannot bear the pain. You are right, I cannot. But they will give me no choice. As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life.'

John Frith was burned at the stake on July 4, 1533. He was 30 years old.

From Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, p. 435.