“Popes come and go, empires clash, new worlds arise, but Rome is eternally Rome, which is to say that its people were busy as always sweating, swearing, eating, fornicating, occasionally praying, and without surcease, gossiping.”

“True sleep eluded me. Morpheus is a capricious god; he comes easily to some and only with greatest difficulty to others. To lure him, it is best to pretend disinterest. Engage the mind in some pursuit unrelated to what is truly desired and allow no distraction from it. For me, nothing works so well as a walk through Rome.”

“A few old men might cling to their mitres and mumble their prayers, but they were a dying breed. It was men like Borgia who were the Church now. They had transformed it into a mimers' play filled with posturing and pretense, a performance to distract the rabble while they went about their worldly business out of sight.Where was the sheperd to stand against such wolves?”

“You are bruised.''Am I? I hadn't noticed.''Lucrezia says you killed the bastard.'... Cesare's hands were shaking. Hard, sun-darkened hands made to hold a sword or lance unflinchingly, but they trembled against my pale skin.”

“He was a handsome man, not in the way of mercurial Cesare or the false angel, Morozzi, but with a calm steadiness that sat well upon him and shown in everything he did. The creations he drew from fire and air were possessed of great delicacy, but I was coming to realize that the man himself was as an oak, unshakable in the greatest storm.”

“Most people don't know their ass from their elbow.”

“We have all made mistakes, each and every one of us. The trick is to not keep making them over and over.” “I don’t,” I said, not modestly but truthfully. “I keep finding new mistakes to make. I suspect that I have a genius for it.”