Damn it all, Cromwell, why are you such a . . . person? It isn’t as if you could afford to be.
Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as [Sister Philomena] could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity.
Camille said, Your trouble is, you’re backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which i...
At Smithfield Frith is being shoveled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his beauty: a compaction of mud, grease, charred bone.
Arrange your face
And your man?' He hesitates. 'Long dead too?' It is the most delicate way that can be contrived, to ask a man if he has killed someone.
Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.
There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, inbuilt, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not to be expected...
The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain—the rain that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out...
The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she...
The king is good to those who think him good.
Martyr More,’ he says. ‘The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints.
Jane says, ‘He asked me if I would be his good mistress.’ They exchange glances. There is a difference between a mistress and a good mistress: does Jane know that? The first implies concubinage. The s...
It is not so important, what happens to the body. I have led in some ways a blessed life. God has been good and not tested me. Now he does I cannot fail him. I have been vigilant over my heart, and I...
If your going to be ugly it is well to be whole-hearted about it, put some effort in. Georges turned heads.
If a man spoke to you in that tone, you'd invite him to step outside and ask someone to hold your coat.378
I wonder what I’ve married into, Morgan Williams says. But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual sniffle, some women have a headache, and Morgan has this wonder.
I see that both the living and the dead commute, riding their familiar trains. I am not, as you will have gathered, a person who needs false excitement, or simulated innovation. I am willing, though,...
I don’t grudge them some bodily comforts. It cannot always be Lent. What I cannot stomach is hypocrisy, fraud, idleness—their worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of invention. Wh...
Do you look like the photograph on your book jackets? Authors, I find, seldom do.