Jesus Maria,’ the boy says. ‘The star that guides us to Bethlehem. I thought it was an engine for torture.
There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins.
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 is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.
I think, if you’re going to kill a man, do it. Don’t write him a letter about it. Don’t bluster and threaten and put him on his guard.
Our virtues make us; but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times.
At first they’d thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale.
Robespierre has never forgiven his friends the injuries he has done them, nor the kindnesses he has received from them, nor the talents some of them possess that he doesn’t.
I can’t divide Camille’s loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.
CAMILLE DESMOULINS: For the establishment of liberty and the safety of the nation, one day of anarchy will do more than ten years of National Assemblies.
Gradually, you see, our people are coming into the power they have always thought is their due.
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 their paper eyes blind.
The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them of of their clothes.
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 them over London Bridge.
He, Cromwell, says to his visitors, just tell them this, and tell them loud: to each monk, one bed: to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?
Look at my face: I am not afraid of any man alive.
But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?
One fear creates a dereliction, the offense brings on a greater fear, and there comes a point where the fear is too great and the human spirit just gives up and a child wanders off numb and directionless and ends up following a crowd and watching a killing.
There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word.
Leases, writes, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.