This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a...

The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow...

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed.

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to...

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,...