Last night he kept the vigil alone. He lay awake, wishing Liz back; waiting for her to come and lie beside him. It's true he is at Esher with the cardinal, not at home at the Austin Friars. But, he thought, she'll know how to find me. She'll look for...
But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguess...
If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a g...
It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.
You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.
The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, ...
Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my serpentine enemy. Sion says, she goes to it with her brother; he says, what, her brother George? ‘Any brother she's got. Th...
Where is Richard, do you know?" "Chopping onions on the back step. Oh, you mean Master Richard? Upstairs. Eating. Where's anybody?
By the hairy balls of Jesus
A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and f...
My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bag full of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes. What are the chances you will pull out the eel?
Let's say I will rip your life apart. Me and my banker friends. How can he explain that to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places ...
He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, "Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion?" A silence. After a while,...
There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you c...
Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn't matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It's the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say. It is the processions tha...
The multitude," Cavendish says, "is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down--for the novelty of the thing.
It's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in street and stamped on. Pg.406
He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.
