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8e27bb4
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There have been none like us before. And there will be none afterwards. Be careful what you write.
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Sarah Dunant |
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276fbb7
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The Devil may take the reckless, but the good will surely die of boredom. Boredom and frustration.
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Sarah Dunant |
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4d8b9f5
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Missing rubs the soul raw.
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Sarah Dunant |
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822f820
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Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.
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Sarah Dunant |
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a3bac41
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If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.
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god
grace
luck
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Sarah Dunant |
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e5c1ec1
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Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister. Now, when [Pedro Calderon] shuts his eyes, he cannot see anything else.
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Sarah Dunant |
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c9d3dcf
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So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy.
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Sarah Dunant |
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21fa6ad
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Family. The greatest loyalty after God in the world.
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Sarah Dunant |
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7b0bc4f
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One enemy at the time.
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borgias
cesare-borgia
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Sarah Dunant |
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97937a3
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Ah, he has too many ideas, that man da Vinci. His mind works faster than his hands.
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imagination
da-vinci
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Sarah Dunant |
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58037e6
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Obsessed? I don't know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn't think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn't want to get rid of. I suppose that's a definition of obsession, yes.
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Sarah Dunant |
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a12a1c0
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Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face.
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Sarah Dunant |
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b64ee5c
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She has never liked sleeping alone. Even as a small child, she would steel herself to brave the black soup of the room as far as her brother's bed, creeping in beside him. And he, who when awake would rather fight than talk, would put his arms around her and stroke her hair until their warmness mingled and she fell asleep.
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Sarah Dunant |
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5ffe961
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Outside, the city is changing. While we have been talking of God's laws and seacrets of the earth, a cold fog has come rolling off the sea, pushing through the allys, sliding over the water, rubbing up agienst the cold stone. As I walk the street falls away behind me, the shop's blue awning lost within seconds. People move like ghosts, their voices disconnected from their bodies; as fast as they loom up they dissapear agien. The fog is so d..
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Sarah Dunant |
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120a5b5
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There is more glory in peace than in war,
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Sarah Dunant |
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c207d52
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If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.
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Sarah Dunant |
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4e0e559
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She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.
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Sarah Dunant |
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bc728ed
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Birth, coupling, death. The more she thinks about it, the more it seems that that is all there is: a wheel turning over and over, moving so fast that sometimes you cannot even make out the spokes. It is a wonder there is any room for poetry.
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poetry
meaning
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Sarah Dunant |
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b72f88c
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It was so cold. In the monastery. Sometimes the wind came from the sea with ice in it... It could freeze the skin off your face. Once the snow was so deep we couldn't get out of the doors to the woodshed. A monk jumped from a window. He sank into a drift and took a long time to get up. That night, they made me sleep next to the stove. I was small, thin, like a piece of birch bark. But then the Stove went out. Father Bernard took me into his..
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inspirational
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Sarah Dunant |
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78218aa
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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.
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Sarah Dunant |
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3426d1d
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Either you're standing under your halos, eyes up to heaven, or you're munching apples in their faces and flashing your bush. I'm not even sure they know which they prefer. The best you can do is choose when you change your costume.
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Sarah Dunant |
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2ba5214
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And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.
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Sarah Dunant |
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f430d41
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Johannes Burchard. The only man in Rome whose face remains the same be it perfume or shit under his nose.
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Sarah Dunant |
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b317dbb
|
Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister.
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Sarah Dunant |
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af88a0e
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Make enemies if you have to- and you will- but always make sure the most powerful stay your friends.
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friends
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Sarah Dunant |
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71030b5
|
It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.
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Sarah Dunant |
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1517693
|
in the chaos of war, I would have looked simply small, and therefore neither a promise nor a threat.
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Sarah Dunant |
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f1ca052
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Together he [Girolamo Savonarola] and his archenemy Lorenzo [de' Medici] would have been the stuff of gargoyles. One could almost imagine the diptych in which their profiles confronted each other, their noses as powerful as their personalities.
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Sarah Dunant |
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6f71788
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Uncertainty is more contagious than the plague. Cesare,
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Sarah Dunant |
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9129f16
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You would be surprised by the strength of a desperate man.
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Sarah Dunant |
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80a6467
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People do not smile when they are in hell,
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Sarah Dunant |
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7aa5860
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God always seeth man from heaven and the angels report to Him every hour.
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Sarah Dunant |
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ea721fc
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When there is fear about the future, it is comforting to take it out on outsiders who can be blamed for the past.
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Sarah Dunant |
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7b888d0
|
As the last chimes die away, a series of contorted male shrieks rise up from somewhere nearby; a late coupling between the sheets or a few early knife thrusts into a belly? He smiles. Such are the sounds of his beloved city, the sounds indeed of the whole of Italy.
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Sarah Dunant |
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0093cbd
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Man is not born to be happy.
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Sarah Dunant |
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2bb66e1
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Family. The greatest loyalty after God.
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Sarah Dunant |
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064d2cb
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Cesare Borgia--oh, Cesare Borgia has proved himself a great warrior.
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Sarah Dunant |
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716e7d8
|
there is a kind of comfort to be gained from the passing of time, hour upon hour, day upon day, time falling like thick flakes of snow, the next laid upon the last, again and again, until what has been is gradually covered over, its original shape and colour hidden under a blanket of what is now.
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Sarah Dunant |
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9948466
|
Borgia bastard could never be the social equal of a legitimate Medici.
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Sarah Dunant |
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87eee94
|
He spends the night in prayer. God's voice, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, tells him what the politician in him already knows: that whatever he might stand to gain from playing one against the other, the prospect of a foreign army marching through Italy can bring only instability and devastation in its wake for all. He is, it seems, the Church's shepherd after all.
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Sarah Dunant |
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2439f73
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This then is Borgia Rome: a city where a traveler entering the gates must still cross acres of country before he reaches the center, where animals still outnumber citizens, goats and cattle grazing the imperial ruins, their insistent teeth pulling weeds--and mortar--from between the stones of history. A city still struggling with a chasm of hardship between rich and poor, still ripped apart by gross family violence. But also a place of grow..
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Sarah Dunant |
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148a21c
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I know what she is thinking. That she will never have those feelings. And she wants to have them. Oh, how much she wants to...I have seen it before, the way women yearn more for a child when they have fallen in love. It is part of the disease, like the ague that goes with fever. Maybe the real lover's prick goes deep enough to ignite some loning in the womb. Maybe it is the promise of a future, something left over once the passion is spent.
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Sarah Dunant |
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96479e6
|
She has always felt safe inside his arms, this beautiful, powerful elder brother, whom so many fear but who has always been as tender as a lover with her.
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Sarah Dunant |
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c99033d
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What was once the language of secrecy is now the language of power.
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Sarah Dunant |