History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

This was an idea peculiar to Camille, Maximilien thought, that the worse things get, the better they get. No one else seems to think this way.

I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.