Hindsight Is The Historian's Necessary Vice.

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.

It Is Almost A Joke, But A Joke That Nobody Tells.

Back In My 20s, When I Wrote 'a Place Of Greater Safety,' The French Revolution Novel, I Thought, 'i'll Always Have To Write Historical Novels Because I Can't Do Plots.'' But In The Six Years Of Writing That Novel, I Actually Learned To Write, To Invent Things.

He Once Thought It Himself, That He Might Die With Grief: For His Wife, His Daughters, His Sisters, His Father And Master The Cardinal. But Pulse, Obdurate, Keeps Its Rhythm. You Think You Cannot Keep Breathing, But Your Ribcage Has Other Ideas, Rising And Falling, Emitting Sighs. You Must Thrive In Spite Of Yourself; And So That You May Do It, God Takes Out Your Heart Of Flesh, And Gives You A Heart Of Stone.

The Things You Think Are The Disasters In Your Life Are Not The Disasters Really. Almost Anything Can Be Turned Around: Out Of Every Ditch, A Path, If You Can Only See It.