Sarah Dunant

“Interesting, I thought, how quickly history becomes stories rather than reality; one step already from the truth.”

“Family. The greatest loyalty after God.”

“I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all.”

“Ah, he has too many ideas, that man da Vinci. His mind works faster than his hands.”

“If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.”