Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduc...
Some said the world would end in 1533. Last year had its adherents too. Why not this year? There is always somebody ready to claim that these are the end times, and nominate his neighbor as the Antich...
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...
Show me where it says, in the Bible, Purgatory. Show me where it says relics, monks, nuns. Show me where it says Pope.
She was a bossy little woman who approached life with her elbows out.
Richard goes with a bob of the head but without another word. It seems he interprets 'don't tell anybody' as 'don't tell anybody but Rafe', because ten minutes later Rafe comes in, and stands looking...
Rafe asks him, could the king's freedom be obtained, sir, with more economy of means? Less bloodshed?Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, one you have fixe...
People romance about their children long before they are born—long before, and long after. They name them and rename them. They see them as their second chances, a chance to get it right this time, as...
Our schools kept from us, for as long as they could, the dangerous, disruptive, upsetting knowledge of our own female nature.
Life’s going to change. You thought it already had? Not nearly as much as it’s going to change now.Everything you disapprove of you’ll call aristocratic. This term can be applied to food, to books and...
I was bound to step out of line, if only because I did not know where the line was: if only because I did not know anything.
I know that, if I took your oath, I should be damned. There are those who would envy your insight, he says, into the workings of grace. But then, you and God have always been on familiar terms, not so...
I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.
Henry says. He mimes a javelin throw: though in the restrained way
He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expect...
He glances up again, and recognizes Gregory’s design. It is a system of holy simplicity: big papers on the bottom, small ones on top.
He does not even hate Francis Weston, any more than you hate a biting midge; you just wonder why it was created.
Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.
England has enjoyed fifty years of peace. This is the Tudors’ covenant; peace is what they offer.
Death stays when the visitors have gone, and the nurses turn a blind eye; he leans back on his portable throne, he crosses his legs, he says, ‘Entertain me.