Sarah Dunant Quotes

He spends the night in prayer. God's voice, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, tells him what the politician in him already knows: that whatever he might stand to gain from playing one against the other, the prospect of a foreign army marching through Italy can bring only instability and devastation in its wake for all. He is, it seems, the Church's shepherd after all.

If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.

And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.

Missing rubs the soul raw.

You would be surprised by the strength of a desperate man.

So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy.

It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.

Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister. Now, when [Pedro Calderon] shuts his eyes, he cannot see anything else.

Interesting, I thought, how quickly history becomes stories rather than reality; one step already from the truth.

This then is Borgia Rome: a city where a traveler entering the gates must still cross acres of country before he reaches the center, where animals still outnumber citizens, goats and cattle grazing the imperial ruins, their insistent teeth pulling weeds - and mortar - from between the stones of history. A city still struggling with a chasm of hardship between rich and poor, still ripped apart by gross family violence. But also a place of growing magnificence and confidence where, for the first time in centuries, the future no longer looks bleaker than the past, and where the new Pope has chosen for himself a name designed to foster a belief in magnificence again. Alexander

But anyone who has been that young knows that the great grief of love is that your body feels the most when it knows the least.

One enemy at the time.

Birth, coupling, death. The more she thinks about it, the more it seems that that is all there is: a wheel turning over and over, moving so fast that sometimes you cannot even make out the spokes. It is a wonder there is any room for poetry.

People do not smile when they are in hell,

She has never liked sleeping alone. Even as a small child, she would steel herself to brave the black soup of the room as far as her brother's bed, creeping in beside him. And he, who when awake would rather fight than talk, would put his arms around her and stroke her hair until their warmness mingled and she fell asleep.

Beauty is your gift from God and it should be used and not squandered. Study this face as if it were a map of the ocean, your own trade route to the Indies. For it will bring you its own fortune. But always believe what the glass tells you. Because while others will try to flatter you, it has no reason to lie.

Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face.

No one bothered dressing up in priests' robes, for even in chaos hierarchy rules and their cloth wasn't rich enough.

Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.

In the chaos of war, I would have looked simply small, and therefore neither a promise nor a threat.

What was once the language of secrecy is now the language of power.

A voice yelled after me but it was wayward and might have been a cry out of someone's nightmare.

There have been none like us before. And there will be none afterwards. Be careful what you write.

Make enemies if you have to- and you will- but always make sure the most powerful stay your friends.

Obsessed? I don't know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn't think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn't want to get rid of. I suppose that's a definition of obsession, yes.