Quotes from Philippa Gregory

I knew when I first saw you that you were the woman I would want for all my life.

Every woman should marry for her own advantage since her husband will represent her, as visible as her front door, for the rest of his life. If she chooses a wastrel she will be avoided by all her neighbors as a poor woman; catch a duke and she will be Your Grace, and everyone will be her friend. She can be pious, she can be learned,she cane be witty and wise and beautiful, but if she is married to a fool she will be that poor Mrs. Fool until the day he dies.

Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound?

This child could not command a pet dove. Harsh but true, lol!

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.

These were simple people: when someone told them that they had nothing to fear they knew that they were in trouble.

What better way could they spend the last days of the world, than falling in love?

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

There is no one who loves peace more than a soldier

I am sure your piety does you great credit, Margaret. But certainly, if God is speaking to the king, then He has not chosen the best time for this conversation.

If He were not God, then one would think it very badly planned.

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.

And it seems to me that there is nothing more likely to cure a woman of lust than marriage. Now I understand what the saint meant when he said that it was better to marry than to burn. In my experience, if you marry, you certainly won't burn.

It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all.

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?

He bares his yellow teeth in a smile at me. 'Everyone is always our enemy,' he says. 'But right now, we are winning.

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.

The common people only see weakness where there is greatness of spirit.

Her confidence is extraordinary, her impertinence unforgivable, her words terribly true.

It is luck to love someone who is free to love you in return. But I don't. I just desire him, desire him and desire him; and I wait for it to burn out. Everything I have ever gained has always turned to ashes after a little while. Why should this be any different?

I believe that to be a free woman is to be both passionate and intelligent; and I am a free woman at last.

She flashed me a quick black glance and then her dark eyelashes swept down on her cheeks. 'Not me,' she said 'I make my own plans. I don't risk being taken up and dropped again.' 'You told me to risk it.' I reminded her. 'That was for you,' she said 'I would not live my life as you live yours. You would always do as you were bid. I am not like you. I make my own way.

Well hear this,' she hissed in my ear. 'Hear this Mary. I am playing my own game and I don't want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know everything too late.' 'You're going to make him love you?' Abruptly she released me and I gripped my elbow and arm where the bones ached. 'I'm going to make him marry me.' she said flatly. 'And if you so much as breathe a word to anyone, then I will kill you.

It was Anne who was before the table like a prisoner before the bar. She did not stand with her head bowed as I always did. Anne stood with her head high, one dark eyebrow slightly raised, and she met my Uncle's glare as if she were his equal.