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"He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved."
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"To touch or not to touch . . . that is the question. Handshakes, hugs, and other touching all have their appropriate space and place. The key to success in this area is to know when, where, and how to best put these into action."
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Personal Development
"Dining with the King; your attire, attitude and mentality must change."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, headmired in others, but he could not acquire it himself."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Take the initiative with deliberate steps to be a polite person:1. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze.2. Reciprocate a thoughtful word or a good deed in kind.3. Say "excuse me" when you bump into someone, unintentionally violate someone's space, or need to get someone's attention.4. Apologize when you've made a mistake or are in the wrong.5. Live by the "Golden Rule" and treat others the way you would like to be treated.6. When dining at home or in a restaurant, wait until everyone is served before eating your meal.7. Acknowledge notable events like birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries."
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Personal Development
"Impeccable manners and courteous behavior are the hallmarks for healthy relations and human interaction."
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Personal Development
"Asking permission to call someone by their first name is a gesture of gentility and consideration. And once permission is granted, the gate is open for mutual respect and mutual purpose. Simply demonstrating this courtesy before making an assumption is impressive. Once permission is granted, you have earned points on both sides."
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Personal Development
"A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands."
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Personal Development
"You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,' Ellen told her daughter. 'You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls."
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Personal Development
"Audiences who behave obscene toward prominent people have no clue that their opinions can result others to have a bad impression on them."
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Personal Development
"Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh."
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"Those sectaries in Europe who are always expecting the end of the world, but who hope that, after the earth has been consumed by fire, they will be seated in glory: grilled a little, crisp at the edges and blackened in parts, but still, thanks be to God, alive for eternity, and seated at his right hand."
Faith
"I aim to make the fiction flexible so that it bends itself around the facts as we have them. Otherwise I don't see the point. Nobody seems to understand that. Nobody seems to share my approach to historical fiction. I suppose if I have a maxim, it is that there isn't any necessary conflict between good history and good drama."
Storytelling
"Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny...); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated."
Law
"One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting."
Commitment
"It is not easy to talk about a condition once dismissed as 'the career women's disease'. But women will continue to suffer until we realise the cost of ignoring it."
Health
"Give me a book, she said. "A book of sermons, anything."What do you want a book for?"I want words. I've got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose."
Knowledge
"This visit has compacted the court's quarrels and intrigues, trapped them in the small space within the town's walls. The travelers have become as intimate with each other as cards in a pack: contiguous, but their paper eyes blind."
Observation
"Have you ever observed that when a man gets a son he takes all the credit, and when he gets a daughter he blames his wife? And if they do not breed at all, we say it is because her womb is barren. We do not say it is because his seed is bad."
Family
"Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time."
Reading
"As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire."
Creativity
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