“When I watch the living meet,And the moving pageant fileWarm and breathing through the streetWhere I lodge a little while,If the heats of hate and lustIn the house of flesh are strong,Let me mind the house of dustWhere my sojourn shall be long.In the nation that is notNothing stands that stood before;There revenges are forgot,And the hater hates no more;Lovers lying two and twoAsk not whom they sleep beside,And the bridegroom all night throughNever turns him to the bride.”

“Cranmer says, ‘We will try again with More. At least, if he refuses, he should give his reasons.’He swears under his breath, turns from the window. ‘We know his reasons. All Europe knows them. He is against the divorce. He does not believe the king can be head of the church. But will he say that? Not he. I know him. Do you know what I hate? I hate to be part of this play, which is entirely devised by him. I hate the time it will take that could be better spent, I hate it that minds could be better employed, I hate to see our lives going by, because depend upon it, we will all be feeling our age before this pageant is played out. And what I hate most of all is that Master More sits in the audience and sniggers when I trip over my lines, for he has written all the parts. And written them these many years.”

“As I stood there,hushed and still,I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.”

“I am not I.I am this onewalking beside me whom I do not see,whom at times I manage to visit,and whom at other times I forget;who remains calm and silent while I talk,and forgives, gently, when I hate,who walks where I am not,who will remain standing when I die.”

“Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsingat bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime showsand CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger togetherpressing on my stomach.”

“From up above, in a plane passing over, you’d just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while.”