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 strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.

Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.

To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.