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.

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.

Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister.

She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.

Johannes Burchard. The only man in Rome whose face remains the same be it perfume or shit under his nose.

Ah, he has too many ideas, that man da Vinci. His mind works faster than his hands.