Quotes from Philippa Gregory

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.

He smiled at me, his wolfish smile. 'We are making a new order,' he said, 'a new world. Everything is changing, and here we are, at the very front of the change.' 'If I refuse?' I asked, my voice very thing. He gave me his most cynical smile that left his eyes as cold as wet coals. 'You don't,' he said simply. 'The world's not changed that much yet. Men still rule.

Go with the knowledge that I will think of you every time I lift your boy from his bed, every time I kneel for my prayers, every time I order my horse, every hour of every day.

She smiled an empty bitter smile that did not reach her eyes, 'Do you think it can be worse than this? I cannot be charged with treason, I am the Queen of England, I am England. I cannot be divorced, I am the wife of the King. He has run mad this spring and he will recover by autumn. And all I have to do is get through this summer.' 'The Boleyn summer,' I said.

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.

And all I want to hear are the sweetest words in the world, when he says: "Bed, Wife.

I don't ask for more than a smile and to be in your prayers. I love from afar.

Joan was a young woman who tried to walk her own path in the world of men, just as my great-aunt told me. And it led to this cold tower, this swan dive, this death.

lechery? he asked with a wink, guessing from the hour that I had been with some palace kitchen-maid. Oh aye, most vile, I said cheerfully, and jumped into the boat.

You look as if you would eat me up," he says. "I would," I say. "I cannot think how to sate my desire for you. I think I will have to keep you prisoner here and eat you up in little cutlets, day after day." "If I kept you prisoner, I would devour you in one greedy swallow," he chuckles. "But you would not get out till you were with child.

it is easier to take a country into war than to bring it to live at peace

We are both people of faith," he said quietly. "Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.

We have no time for regrets or second thoughts. If a plan goes awry we make another, if one weapon breaks in our hands we find a second. If the steps fall down before us we overleap them and go up. It is always onward and upward

much commented on. I have three new hoods to match, which

how it is that men, even thoughtful men, can sound as if they never consider anything but always simply know.

I am going to be Queen of England,' I protest. 'You make it sound like a battle to the death.' 'It is a battle to the death,' she says simply. 'That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win.

When you are still and thoughtful you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy.

She tried to live like an ordinary woman; but some women cannot live an ordinary life. She tried to walk in the common ways; but some women cannot put their feet to that path. This is a man's world, Jacquetta, and some women cannot march to the beat of a man's drum.

never have imagined that she would imprison a woman about to give birth for doing nothing worse than marrying the young man she loves.

She did not want him to know that she was not his beloved little sister any more but a woman who had learned to throw everything, even her mortal soul, into the battle to become queen.

A single man's imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.

For a moment I felt the terror. The deep primeval terror of something one does not understand, something which is against nature or, at the least, against everything one has ever seen or known before.

If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer," she says. "For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer. You are not an anchorite, a solitary saint, you are a preacher.