“Fantasy is unconstrained by truth.”

“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter. He is surprised that the Italia...”

“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, w...”

“There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not s...”

“The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a...”

“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”

“You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.”

“True spirituality is "the place where desperation meets Jesus.”

“In Jesus the full meaning of peace is revealed: he gave peace, made peace and is our peace (Jn. 14:27; Eph. 2:14f.).”