“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.”

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”

“Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.”

“Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information? Bones asked, getting back to the subject. You to take me, she replied at once. Not gonna happen! I spat, squ...”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“Then he looked back to me, and smiled. It was a terrible expression, filled with edges, and with knives.”