I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.

I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. But, I literally work all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and that's not an exaggeration.

Sometimes we see the Civil War in movies and imagine these neatly aligned rows of men with muskets, walking in line to shoot each other. In reality the things that fascinated me were how absolutely ruthless and violent so many engagements were, how much suffering and how men were not prepared.

I fear that a life of death has made me numb to both.

The day Henry made a choice... that some men are just too interesting to die.

I nearly broke out laughing when the wrteched soothsayer warned Caesar: "Beware the Ides of April." I thought it a miracle (and a relief) that no one in the udience had snickered or yelled out a correction. How could such an error be made by an actor? Had my ears deceived me?

I know of nobody that is coming, I am sure, unless Charlotte Lucas should happen to call in- and I am sure my dinners are good enough for her, since she is an unmarried woman of seven-and-twenty, and as such should expect little more than a crust of bread washed down with a cup of loneliness.