"The king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And thus he said as he walked, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!""

"...he was, says Grafton, 'a tightrope performer of self-creation'. Spring and autumn made him melancholy, he said, beccause all those flowers and fruits made him feel how little he had produced in his life - 'Battista', he would tell himself, 'now it's your turn to promise some sort of fruits to the human race'. Leonardo too would have this haunting sense of non-achievement which is the downside of the expansionist Renaissance mood. If the possibilities are endless, the realization of them can only ever be partial."

-Charles Nicholl, regarding the strata of self-doubt inherent in the Renaissance psyche

"You ever drunk Bailey's from a shoe?"