You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’ ‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.

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

God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.

He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.