Quotes from Philippa Gregory

Sometimes God gives us a moment of destiny, and we have to hear the call and rise to it.

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.

He greeted Anne with a roar of joy, swept her up and kissed her. You would think he had never been Sir Loyal Heart to his Queen Katherine. You would think it had been his worst enemy who had died and not a woman who had loved him faithfully for twenty-seven years and died with a blessing for him on her lips.

She doesn't realize yet though men go to war it is the women who suffer--perhaps more than anyone.

This is George, my beloved George. D'you think I want to go to my grave knowing that at the moment of his trial he looked around and saw no one lift a finger for him? If it is the death of me, I shall go to him. Go then, he said. Kiss our baby good-bye before you go, and Henry. I shall tell Catherine that you left your blessing for her. And kiss me farewell. For if you go into that courtroom you will never come out alive.

I could not love this man, knowing that he would not listen to me, knowing that I was not allowed even to show him my sadness. He was the father of my children and yet he would have no interest in them until they were old enough for him to use as counters in the game of inheritance. He had been my lover for years and yet it had been my task to make sure that he never knew me.

Look, you can't fight everyone... You have to choose where you belong and rest there.

They are a couple in love, and anyone but a fool would see it is simply that, nothing more- and certainly nothing less.

Perhaps there is a God like firelight, but all we can see is the shadows that we cast ourselves when we walk in front of the fire. Then we see great leaping shadows and think that this is God, but really it is only our own image.

She smiles. "You know you can do nothing. What will be, will be. If there is a battle"—I gasp but her smile is steady—"if there is a battle, then either your husband will win, and your son will take the throne; or your brother will win and you will be sister to the king.

I stop still with the shock and fell my head swim. Richard takes my hand. We stand for a moment, handclasped as if we are clinging to each other in this new and terrifying world. We don't notice the passing servants, or the courtiers hurrying by. Richard looks into my eyes and once again I know us for the children that we were, who had to make our own destiny in a world we could not understand.

There will be hundreds of sons making the same journey,' he says. 'All of us riding with broken hearts, all of us thinking of vengeance. 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.

Dinner was a meal where good manners overlaid discomfort.

But a good man wouldn't marry you for fortune, and perhaps you shouldn't choose such as one as that. Shouldn't I? A good man would marry you for love. he says simply.

We are Plantagenets - we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.

Mas, entre nós, nunca houve tempo para as palavras de amor; a maior parte do nosso tempo foi gasta em despedidas.

For a moment we glared at each other, stubborn as cats on the stable wall, full of mutual resentment and something darker, the old sense between sisters that there is only really room in the world for one girl. The sense that every fight could be to the death.

The most powerful men of the kingdom have dragged a duchess down and sent her out to be a marvel to the common people of London. They are so deeply afraid of her that they took the risk to dishonor their own. They are so anxious to save themselves that they thought they should throw her aside.

She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet.

One little boy, and he a bastard,' Anne said thoughtfully. 'One little girl of six, one elderly Queen and a King in the prime of his life.' She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. 'What's going to happen?' She asked. 'Something has to happen. What's it going to be?

The queen sees me coming, turns toward us and waits, with a killer's patience, for me to reach the chancel steps.

If it means something to you,then take it to heart. If it means nothing, it means nothing, let it go.

The stewards, and then the bailiffs, and then finally the lawyers meet. They wrangle, they agree, and we are to be married in June. It is no little decision for me - for the first time in my life I have my own lands in my own hands as a widow; once I become a wife everything becomes Lord Stanley's property. I have to struggle to reserve what I can from the law that rules that a wife has no rights, and I keep what I can, but I know that I am choosing my master.

I was not nervous. For the first time ever I felt as if I had taken my life into my own hands and I could command my own destiny. For once I was obedient neither to uncle nor father nor king, but following my own desires. And I knew that my desire led me, inexorably, to the man I loved. I