Sarah Dunant

The Devil may take the reckless, but the good will surely die of boredom. Boredom and frustration.

But anyone who has been that young knows that the great grief of love is that your body feels the most when it knows the least.

Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.

So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy.

She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.

Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face."

There have been none like us before. And there will be none afterwards. Be careful what you write.

Johannes Burchard. The only man in Rome whose face remains the same be it perfume or shit under his nose.