18 quotes
His word is just what a diplomat’s word should be: as clear as glass and as unstable as water.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
The purpose of ghost stories is extortion, generally: to frighten poor folks into paying for prayers and charms to protect them.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Honour is a luxury, when someone is trying in earnest to kill you.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Only a fool sees plots where there are none.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
We are all dying, just at different speeds.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Usually he is the soul of courtesy. But if you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
You see how, my Lord, by the time my councillors proclaimed me, they had already started lying to me. As soon as you are king, nobody tells you the truth.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
“Majesty, was it not an honest mistake?”
“Women are the beginning of all mistakes. Read any of the divines, and they will tell you.”
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
He would like Wolsey to come in so they could have a game of chess: though you should never play chess with a prelate, they always have a pawn in their sleeves.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Treason can be construed from any scrap of paper, if the will is there. A syllable will do it. The power is in the hands of the reader, not the writer.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
“Their abbots will curse you.”
“Curses with me have none effect, because I give them no credit. They may curse till they combust.”
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
He had thought, if ever I need to disappear, Venice is where I will come.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
I don’t have a history, only a past.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
But what you must remember about the king—he was brought up to heed priests and to ask forgiveness for everything he does. You may kick out the confessors and tell him he is justified, but he still has a priest in the head.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
The monks present themselves as having lived like beggars, in garments ragged and patched, and without firewood or food stores. They have sold the firewood, of course, they have sold the grain, and unless you are swift on their trail they will pawn or bury their treasures.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
Young men claim they want change, they want freedom, but the truth is, freedom just confuses them and change makes them quake. Set them on the open road with a purse and a fair wind, and before they’ve gone a mile they are crying for a master: they must be indentured, they must be in bond, they must have someone to obey.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)
He thinks, ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till it’s not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground and ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind. Princes hate those to whom they have incurred debts.
The Mirror & the Light (2020)