Philippa Gregory Quotes

One’s lover is one’s partner in observing and understanding the world. Marriage is a place where joint narratives are composed. If the lover is a liar then all your joint observations are unreliable. You will have to start all over again.

A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?

They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.

Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

... all that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.

I have given my word that only death will take me from you.

For he loved her and he understood that a woman cannot always live as a man. He understood that she cannot always think as he thought, walk as he walked, breathe the air that he took in. She would always be a different being from him, listening to a different music, hearing a different sound, familiar with a different element.

Yes, Your Grace," I correct her. "I am My Lady, the King's Mother, now, and you shall curtsey to me, as low as to a queen of royal blood. This was my destiny: to put my son on the throne of England, and those who laughed at my visions and doubted my vocation will call me My Lady, the King's Mother, and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina: Margaret R.

If there is love enough,then nothing-not nature, not even death itself- can come between two who love each other.

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.

I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.

And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say.

If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace.

In Spain," indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.

I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him... It is Richard, smiling at my surprise. I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him.

I have learned the power of surviving.

When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.

The wheel of fortune [...] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.

To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.

Some women attract desire. Others do not.

I am too dark in my heart tonight.

...Your trouble, William, is that you have no ambition. You don't see that there is in life only ever one goal.' 'And what is that?' More', George said simply. 'Just more of anything. More of everything.

I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.

I put the charm bracelet away in the purse and return it to my jewel case. I don't need a spell to foresee the future; I am going to make it happen.

She was like a mother to me...and I betrayed as a daughter will betray her mother and yet, never stop loving her.

I love reading and I love thinking - the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.

Fortune's wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.

In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.

War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

One never gets the same summer twice.

Only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends.

I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there.

But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.

...you have to have faith that you are doing God's will. Sometimes you will not understand. Sometimes you will doubt. But if you are doing God's will, you can't be wrong, you can't go wrong.

Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.

I felt as if we were fighting something worse than Anne, some demon that possessed her, that possessed all of us Boleyns: ambition - the devil that had brought us to this little room and brought my sister to this insane distress and us to this savage battle.

the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it

I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?

Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.

Edward lives as if there is no tomorrow, Richard as if he wants no tomorrow, and George as though someone should give it to him for free.

I'm utterly indifferent to Kate Middleton's baby.

But I don't forget and I don't forgive.

Sometimes you cannot help what you hear, you cannot help what you see.

You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition

The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.

I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.