Philippa Gregory Quotes

I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day.

I want to take you for pleasure, and hold you in my arms for desire. I want you to know that it is your kiss that I want, not another heir to the throne. You can know that I love you, quite for yourself, when I come to your bed, and not as the York’s broodmare.” I tilt back my head and look at him under my eyelashes. “You think to bed me for love and not for children? Isn’t that sin?” His arm comes around my waist and his palm cups my breast. “I shall make sure that it feels richly sinful,” - Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville -

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.

Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.' I should be honored, Your Majesty.' I want to give you a little carved stool from my privy chambers. A pretty little piece from France. I hope you will like it.' I should be grateful.' It is for your daughter. For Jane. To sit on. She seems not to have a seat of her own but she must borrow mine.

Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.

The truth is the last thing that matters,' she said. 'And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.

I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love.

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see with her own eyes; but this is not their tempo nor their vision and they cannot tolerate any other.

There are many sorts of love. And when you love a man who is less than you dreamed, you have to make allowances for the difference between a real man and a dream. Sometimes you have to forgive him. Perhaps you even have to forgive him often. But forgiveness often comes with love.

I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.

He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

When they launch snakes you'll have your namesake.

He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?

It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?

For Harry Potter I have all the time in the world.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delight

We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.

She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.

Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.

I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.

Take care with your words, Jacquetta, especially in cursing. Only say the things you mean, make sure you lay your curse on the right man. For be very sure that when you put such words out in the world they can overshoot-like an arrow, a curse can go beyond your target and harm another. A wise woman curses very sparingly.

Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.

When you pray, you know that you want something, that's always the first step. to let yourself know that you want something, that you yearn for it. sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. Because you have to have courage to know what you desire. You have to have courage to acknowledge that you are unhappy without it.

The world hasn't changed that much; men still rule.

When it's done, it's done. And no one will know until it's done.

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree.

En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.

Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter." "And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted. "Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make.

We're going' Anne said firmly. So soon?' Percy pleaded. 'But stars come out at night.' Then they fade at dawn', Anne replied. 'This star needs to veil herself in darkness.

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth.

It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.

Jane," I said quietly. She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer. "Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying." "If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.

Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.

Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, it's nothing. Let it go.

Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.

I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under a shawl then she could not be seen.

I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at at a man for his help.

But Anne, do you love him?" I asked curiously. The curve of her hood hid all but the corner of her smile. "I am a fool to own it, but I am in a fever for his touch.

He had taken George, my beloved George, from me. And he had taken my other self: Anne.

He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls in any forest in Christendom, even in those as far away as Greece. (...) A man may love her if he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she wants to bathe, and she may love him in return until he breaks his word, as men always do, and she sweeps him into the depths with her fishy tail, and turns his faithless blood to water. The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.