I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he’s not, my mother said.

1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris:The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil...

Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the...

You said,’ Camille protested, ‘that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It’s true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing your...

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

In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and...

He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. ‘Of course there will be a revolution,’ he said. ‘You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell,...

I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter,...

So much has been said between them that it is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral.

The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had...

Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win,...

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.

To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king’s whims. If he...

I tell you, dear Citizen Camille—it’s not the deaths I can’t stand. It’s the judgements, the judgements in the courtroom.

But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the...

I daresay something will happen, between now and ’91, to make your fortunes look up.

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...

Very. What is all this harping on intoxication?

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...

Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife?

Every time you go to see Hamlet you don’t expect it to have a happy ending…you’re still enthralled.(Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.)

Those who are made can be unmade.

The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.

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...

Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.

Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your...

He knows different now. It’s the living that 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...

When I was small I dreamed of demons. I thought they were under my bed, but you said, it can’t be so, you don’t get demons our side of the river, the guards won’t let...

He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.

It’s so clean, no conceits, no show, no wit. He means every word. Formerly, you see, he meant every other word. That was his style.

But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and...

Innocence is a bleeding wound without a bandage, a wound that opens with every casual knock from casual passers-by. Experience is an armour.

I picked up a snake once. In Italy.””Why did you do that?””For a bet.””Was it poisonous?””We didn’t know. That was the point of the bet.””Did it bite you?””Of course.””Why of course?””It wouldn’t be much of...

Feminism hasn’t failed, it’s just never been tried.

She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.

And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at...

Do you look like the photograph on your book jackets? Authors, I find, seldom do.

The thing people don’t understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad capitaine...

The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It resists finishing, and partly this is because words are not enough;...

I know she’s rather plain, but every girl has a right to conceal that fact from people who haven’t seen her.

… those sectaries in Europe who are always expecting the end of the world, but who hope that, after the earth has been consumed by fire, they will be seated in glory: grilled a little,...

Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you...

When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did the court find them so?’ The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the...

The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them.

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there....

He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back...

The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

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...

This visit has compacted the court’s quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small space within the town’s walls. The travelers have become as intimate with each other as cards in a pack: contiguous, but...