Robert Goodwin > Quotes

“Clearly, this is an historic form of waterboarding, and, interestingly, the professional torturers of the Inquisition were not only happy to define it as a form of torture, but by the early 1600s had abandoned it in favour of methods they ‘regarded as more merciful’.46”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“Leading aristocrats craved these offices because they offered intimate access to the king, and most coveted of all was Groom of the Stool, who attended on the king’s defecation”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“You are here upon the battleground of earth to eradicate weakness, disharmony and discord. To challenge accepted beliefs, orthodox creeds and dogmas, to rise above the lower mental states of being that would hold you back and imprison you to this cycle of birth and death.”
― Robert Goodwin, The Golden Thread

“The Turkish retreat left Charles’s troops restless for the fight, but the victory has become legendary and the Viennese bakers are said to have baked in celebration a new, deliciously light butter pastry in the shape of the Islamic crescent moon, pastries that today we still call croissants.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“The statistics bear out their opinion: after the Bible, Don Quixote is the most widely translated and most published work in literary history.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“but the victory has become legendary and the Viennese bakers are said to have baked in celebration a new, deliciously light butter pastry in the shape of the Islamic crescent moon, pastries that today we still call croissants.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682