Philippa Gregory quotes:

I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult as writing either history or fiction.

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.

The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.

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.

Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.

I like writing historical fiction.

I don't much like Singapore. It's very big, very modern and very urbanised. As a rule, I prefer older places where you get a sense of the history.

The moment that changed me for ever was when I had my first seminar with my history professor at the University of Sussex. I realised that history would answer all the questions I had spent my life asking. It was an extraordinary moment.

If I could change one thing about myself I'd be less highly strung. I find my sensibility quite high maintenance.

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.

I would never lie to anyone about history.

The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son is a devil and should not.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

At the end of the day, I'm writing in a genre that isn't highly regarded.

I don't shop as much as a lot of people but I do like designer clothes.

This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow.

When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.

Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.

The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will love me.

For instance, I have never believed that there is only one person for each person in the world. It doesn't make the least sense to me. However, in reality, I fell in love at 45 and I am absolutely certain that my now husband is the only man in the world for me, a truth I find both ridiculous and uplifting."

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

Men die in battle; women die in childbirth.

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

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.

When they launch snakes you'll have your namesake.

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

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.

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

I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned...

My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.

Mother, before God," I say, my voice shaking with tears, "I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping not to die in childbirth!

Any woman who dares to make her own destiny will always put herself in danger.

I am, at this moment, what I have always been to him: an object of beauty. He has never loved me as a woman.

A parcel--taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will--is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who.

The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy.

Another husband, another new house, another new country, but I never belong anywhere and I never own anything in my own right.

The castle will seem very quiet and strange without you here. The stone stairs and the chapel will miss your footstep, the gateway will will miss your laughter, and the wall will miss your shadow.

But the magic moment when he walks alone has not yet happened, and I was praying he would do it before I have to leave. Now he will take his first step without me. And every step thereafter, I know. Every step of his life, and me not there to see him walk.

All this is always for nothing," he says. "Don't you understand that yet? Every death is a pointless death; every battle should have been avoided. But if Edward can defeat the queen, and imprison her along with her husband, then it will indeed be over.

We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels?

I say nothing, not one word, from beginning to end, and neither does he. If it were lawful for a woman to hate her husband, I would hate him as a rapist.

I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood-an older girl would have understood long before-that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. he desired me. I desired him. All I had to do was tell him the truth.

Insane", he says simply. "Hopeless. The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son his a devil and should not.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

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.

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

...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.

...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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I am too dark in my heart tonight.

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.

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 have learned the power of surviving.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

One never gets the same summer twice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Some women attract desire. Others do not.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.