You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.

Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.

He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right." "Who is Mark?" "A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer." Gregory says, "Did you not know?

[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.

I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.

I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.