As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution.

Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary.

A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance.

Pepys's Diary formed almost inexhaustible food for my fancy.

I seem to know every inch of Whitehall.
I go in at Hans Holbein's gate, and come out through the matted gallery.
The conversations which I compose between great people of the time are long, and sufficiently animated; in the style, if not with the merits, of Sir Walter Scott's.