Quotes from C.J. Sansom

One can speak without understanding. What

In any investigation, what are the most relevant circumstances? None," he would bark in reply. "All the circumstances are relevant, everything must be examined from every angle!

her whole being dominated by her hatred of the savage God before whom she meant to martyr herself.

it made me think of all the generations who had lived in this City, dashing and scurrying through their lives, some to leave great monuments and dynasties of children, others rushing only to oblivion.

justifying their positions in the name of God, men silence God.

by herself – what a woman,' he

Politics is like dice: the better the player, the worse the man.

let suspicion

and I had passed forty the previous year, I could no longer expect to look young.

There is nothing under the moon that is not subject to change.

What are any of us but pawns in the schemes of the great?

Once I did believe the world could be perfected. I don't think that any more. But I believe I've defended the bad side against the worst.

The Bible says God made man in his image, but I think we make and remake him in whatever image happens to suit our shifting needs.

It was a beautiful October, sunny mellow days succeeding each other, yellow leaves falling gently from the trees.

that the Great War had made mass slaughter ordinary, that was why Stalin and Hitler could commit murder on a scale inconceivable before 1914. It was why these old men could talk like Soviet Commissars or SS men.

I can hardly believe this is the same man I saw kick a cripple not half an hour ago

you, like its predecessors, into a tortuous world of Tudor

This fashion for symbolic designs that people have to puzzle out, it tires me. There are enough real mysteries in the world.' 'But you paint, sir.' 'If ever I find time I do. But I try in my poor way to show people directly and clearly, like Master Holbein. Art should resolve the mysteries of our being, not occlude them further.

I despair when I look at the stuff that floods out of the printing presses now; Commonwealth men ranting against the rich, Calvin's people's warning of hellfire and the Apocalypse, the mad prophecies and lewd stories, the biting and slandering. I wish the damned press had never been invented.

That morning, for all I sat behind the stinking coffin of a murdered man, I found myself lulled along by the monks' beautiful, polyphonic chant. The psalms, and the Latin reading from Job, struck a chord. 'And thou sayest, how doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seest not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.' Thick clouds indeed, I thought. I am still in a fog here.

Morgan laughed. 'Captain Grenville doesn't know the Mary Rose, though at least he's a seaman, unlike some of the captains. Most are knighted gentlemen, you see, to put us in awe.' Like Sir Franklin with the soldiers, I thought

In a monastery fish pond.' He crossed to the door and closed it carefully, before laying the

For me they weren't just names. I look over the desks and think, this boy sat here, that one there. I pray to the Good Lord another war never comes.

No pity, I cannot bear that. I have lived far beyond the age of most men. Though it is always better not to see your end walking down the road towards you.