Quotes from Philippa Gregory

I do not prepare for defeat. To do so would be to betray myself.

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.

a powerful woman will always attract slander

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.

You too might find that your women friends are your truest friends, your sisters are the keepers of your memories and hopes for the future.

She has followed me into every single room in this palace, and then she followed Anne Neville when she was her lady-in-waiting, too. She walked behind Anne at her coronation, carrying the train. Perhaps Lady Margaret is feeling that it's her turn to be the first lady now, and she wants someone trailing along behind her.

So he left her, because in his heart he feared that she was a woman with a divided nature—and he did not realize that all women are creatures of divided nature.

My advice to you is to guard yourself as you rise and destroy your enemies as you fall.

If a writer believes that women do nothing, then he will have to fantasize about their lives to make a good story. If a writer believes that women are weak, rivalrous, and moody, then she will produce an account of them in which they cannot work together, or be trusted. But I know from my reading and from my own life that women are powerful agents of change who can collaborate together, who may love each other, and I base my story on the reality. But

As my wife you cannot refuse me. I have a right to you, as your betrothed husband. From now, till your death, you will never be able to refuse me. There can be no rape between us, only my rights and your duty.

However heart-stopping his smile and however honest his eyes, however much I think of him as a boy fired to greatness by his own ambition, I cannot trust him.

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

He has such kind eyes." "Certainly he has eyes, but they do not have the power of emotion, only of sight.

Sometimes they accuse her in Latin and she looks at them, baffled by a language that she has only ever heard spoken in church, in the Mass that she loves. How could these very sounds, these familiar beloved tones, so solemn and musical to her, now be the voice of accusation ?

Good God, what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard. It is truly amazing.

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.

I was near to delighted laughter because 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.

No," I said. "I don't think I'll ever have a fancy for a man." "Hard luck on the man who loves you," Will offered neutrally. "Very," I said. I shot a sideways look at him. "A disaster for the man who loves me," I repeated. "If he married me he would find me always cold. If he did not, he could waste his life in loving me and I would never return it.

She is a being not of this world," my great-aunt says quietly. "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.

Uma palavra feita sobre coação não tem valor- vou ser livre.

Ah, Hannah, you have never longed to live as I long to live if you do not know that another day is the most precious thing.

He knew then, as she knew always, that it does not matter if a wife is half fish, if a husband is all mortal. If there is love enough, then nothing—not nature, not even death itself—can come between two who love each other.

At the thought of her death I felt a confusing pang of genuine distress mixed with elation

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that marriage is a sacrament," Anne replies. "It was not God who joined us together. The priest says it was; but this is not true. This is the word of the church, not the Bible. Our wedding, like every wedding, was an act of man, not of God. It was not a holy sacrament.