Gregisdead121 ’s Reviews > Wolf Hall > Status Update

"More would have been a priest, but human flesh
called to him with its inconvenient demands. He did not want to be a
bad priest, so he became a husband. "

"If another man were saying this, he'd be trying to start a fight. When
Thomas More says it, it leads to an invitation to dinner"

"The English will never be forgiven
for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get
off their own island. English armies laid waste to the land they moved
through. As if systematically, they performed every action proscribed
by the codes of chivalry, and broke every one of the laws of war. The
battles were nothing; it was what they did between the battles that left
its mark. "

He would like her to shorten her account, but he understands her
need to tell it over, moment by moment, to say it out loud. It is like a
package of words she is making, to hand to him: this is yours now.

"It's two o'clock, then it's three; sometimes it's freeing, to think you
don't have to go to bed because there isn't a bed. He doesn't need to
think of going home; there's no home to go to, he's got no family left.
He'd rather be here drinking with Cavendish, huddled in a corner of the
great chamber at Esher, cold and tired and frightened of the future,
than think about his family and what he's lost."





Huh? Lost?

"Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don't get on by being
original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being
strong. You get on by being a subtle crook; somehow he thinks that's
what Norris is, and he feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he
tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational, but after all,
these circumstances are extreme"

‘The multitude,’ Cavendish says, ‘is always desirous of a change.
They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down – for
the novelty of the thing.’