Julie’s Reviews > Wolf Hall > Status Update

You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. A viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.

Henry says, "Do what you have to do. I will back you."

It's like hearing words you've waited all your life to hear. It's like hearing a perfect line of poetry, in a language you knew before you were born.

Suppose within every book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

The scholar's lips move, like the lips of a monk at vespers; liquid figures spill from his pen.