Цитаты из книги Томас Бэкет

King. But you must be logical, Becket! Becket. No, that isn't necessary, my Liege. We must only do - absurdly - what we have been given to do - right to the end.

CARDINAL. Sincerity is a form of strategy, just like any other, Holy Father. In certain very difficult negotiations, when matters are not going ahead and the usual tactics cease to work, I have been known to use it myself. The great pitfall, of course, is if your opponent starts being sincere at the same time as you. Then the game becomes horribly confusing.

King. (Anxiously) Isn't that going rather far? Folliot. Of course. It won't fool anyone, but it always works.

Becket. The news is not good, my prince. King. News never is. That's a known fact. Life is one long web of difficulties. The secret of it - and there is one, brought to perfection by several generations of worldly-wise philosophers - is to give them no importance whatever. In the end one difficulty swallows up the other and you find yourself ten years later still alive with no harm done. Things always work out.

King... I don't like learning that people I know have died. I've a feeling it may give Death ideas.

King. Why do you put labels on everything to justify your feelings? Becket. Because, without labels, the world would have no shape, my prince. King. Is it so important for the world to have a shape? Becket. It's essential, my prince, otherwise we can't know what we are doing.

King... What use are conquests, when you stop to think? ... But one must always pay the price - that's another thing you taught me, Thomas Becket, when you were still advising me...

I felt myself in good form, my appetite whetted rather than satiated by the work. Talent is like a faucet; while it is open, one must write. Inspiration is a farce that poets invented to give themselves importance.