The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

Those who are made can be unmade.

You know I'm not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king's servant.

...this is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash.

He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.

When a man admits guilt we have to believe him. We cannot set ourselves to proving to him that he is wrong. Otherwise the law courts would never function.

The lawyer's world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.

How many men can say, as I must, 'I am a man whose only friend is the King of England'? I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing.

... every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.

Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

Art is whatever makes you proud to be human.

One cannot find a healthy economy anywhere in the world that does not have a strong industrial base, period.

I'd say there's 100 percent of the guys who think they're in the 25 percent.

The soul of an individual; your soul and my soul, is that part of us that is immortal.

Whosoever says truffle, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic and gastronomic ideas.

As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.

The sensory acts are accordingly distinguished by their objects.

I don’t have to do nothing you say, you old heifer cow. And you are old. Really, really old. And a cow, too. (Simi)

You can't really protect women or men from their choices, so let them have their own lives and trust the process.

I think part of a hero construct is overcoming loss, or being abandoned, or having to make your own way in the world.