“But my sins are my strength, he thinks; the sins I have done, that others have not even found the opportunity of committing. I hug them close; they're mine.”

“No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.”

“Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.”

“This revolution - will it be a living?''We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.''Is that usual?''Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases.”

“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.”

“For one never thinks of you alone, Cremuel, but in company, studying the faces of other people, as if you yourself mean to paint them. You make other men think, not “what does he look like?” but “what do I look like?”

“Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.”