Some would think that it ought to come in the course of nature to a woman of thirty-six, a wife and mother. A little calm, a little quiet within – little chance. Even after childbearing, there is blood in your veins, not milk.
Henry glares at him. “I will say this for you. You stick by your man.” “I have never had anything from the cardinal other than kindness. Why would I not?
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.
Whereas we bless an old soldier and give him alms, pitying his blind or limbless state, we do not make heroes of women mangled in the struggle to give birth.
I believe, but I do not believe enough.
He does not even hate Francis Weston, any more than you hate a biting midge; you just wonder why it was created.
I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue,” Camille said. “It seems so selfserving.
Only then, Hans would insist on committing another portrait against me.
When you’re writing historical fiction, you are always looking for the untold story. You’re looking for what has been repressed politically, or repressed psychologically. You are working in the crypt.
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?
One of the French lords says, “To lose gracefully is an art that every gentleman cultivates.” “I hope to cultivate it too,” he says. “If you see an example I might follow, please point it out.
As I am a woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world. I am the devil’s gateway, the cursed ingress. I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom he was not bold enough to attack, except through me. Well, that is their view of the situation. My view is that there are too many priests with scant learning and smaller occupation. And I wish the Pope and the Emperor and all Spaniards were in the sea and drowned.
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 what I believe. I cannot unlive my life. pg.404.
If all the old stories are to be believed, and some people, let us remember, do believe them, then our king is one part bastard archer, one part hidden serpent, one part Welsh, and all of him in debt to the Italian banks.
Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying,” he manages to smile, “that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string – one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose.
He is tired out from the effort of deciphering the world. Tired from the effort of smiling at the foe.
I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.
One never anticipated the scale of it,” Brissot whispered. “It was planned, yes, and people were paid – but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves.” “And that upsets your plans?” “They have to be directed.” Brissot shook his head. “We don’t want anarchy.
Every journey ends; terminates, at some pier, some mist-shrouded wharf, where torches are waiting.
Statements, indictments, bills are circulated, shuffled between judges, prosecutors, the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor’s office; each step in the process clear, logical, and designed to create corpses by due process of law.