“How old was More when Richard succeeded?He was five.When that dramatic council scene had taken place at the Tower, Thomas More had been five years old. He had been only eight when Richard died at Bosworth.Everything in that history had been hearsay.”

“This would have once been a place for contemplation. He looked up at the towers surrounding him. Many of the dead bodies had been removed. Their places had been taken by the living.”

“Can I help you?" said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.”

“Swinburne, by the way, when a very young man, had gone to Walter Savage Landor, then a very old man, and been given the poet’s blessing he asked for; and Landor when a child had been patted on the head by Dr Samuel Johnson; and Johnson when a child had been taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne for scrofula, the King’s evil; and Queen Anne when a child...”

“He was just a sixteen-year old boy who had been killed, a kid whose photo had been in the paper, a kid who would mostly be forgotten by the time the newspaper went into the garbage-yet he was the universe, all the dying, all the crying. He was everyone who had ever died young.”

“I bet it’s never happened to you."She was right. But that was only because I’d been five years old when Grandpa had started my training. When I’d thought there were monsters under the bed, he taught me how to do a proper sweep to get rid of them.”