"Italy was a living chessboard for the ambitions of half of Europe in those days" (Chapter 1, p. 4).

"Loyalty is a commodity that grows more expensive when times get bloody..." (Chapter 1, p. 7).

"Yet, strangely, it was not all awful. Or perhaps it was not all awful precisely because it was so strange. In places there was almost a sense of wild pageant to it" (Chapter 1, p. 29).

"Don't worry. I will not let the water consume you" (Chapter 1, p. 38).

"I am not lost, though you may be. You are certainly half starved and infected with melancholy and melodrama" (Chapter 2, p. 54).

"Whether this is his fancy or fact I do not know, but it suits me well, for now I see Venice as a series of bigger and smaller circles, coalescing and overlapping, each one a filigree of land and water..." (Chapter 4, p. 69).

"Venice turns out to be no more virtuous...