Quotes from Philippa Gregory

Like many women, she was unable to fit exactly with her husband's view. Her feet hurt: she could not walk in the path of her husband's choosing. She tried to dance to please him, but she could not deny the pain. She is the ancestress of the royal house of Burgundy, and we, her descendants, still try to walk in the paths of men, and sometimes we too find the way unbearably hard.

Historical fiction is a hybrid, a blending of reported reality, reasonable speculation, psychological truth, and the author's imagination.

while the royal burghers rush to the gate and the town guard fling themselves at the bolts and then the great gates

pilgrims and swore an oath? Who rang the

What he does not know is that his greatest friend of all, the man he loves as a brother, has become indeed like a brother: as false to him as any envious rivalrous brother of York.

She is frantic. But if she did not, he would see her as flawed. Ill. Incapable of bearing a child. She has to deny her loss, because he won't be married to a woman who is not perfect. She has buried a dead baby in secret and she has to look as if she is endlessly beautiful, clever, and fertile.

Because I love you desperately. Because I can't sleep for thinking of you. Because I burn up with desire for you. Because I dare not look at you, because if I did, every man and woman at court would sell at that in my eyes.

He's a young man who has lived under the shadow of the sword from the moment when he fled England as a boy of fourteen to the day when he rode home to fight for his claim. Nobody knows better than he that any claimant to the throne has to be killed at once. A king cannot let a pretender live. No king can allow a pretender to live.

We wind our way past Tower Hill and the scaffold that stands there, where my father ended his life, and I bow my head to his memory, and remember his hopeless struggle against Queen Mary. I think how glad he would be to see one daughter, at least, riding from the Tower to freedom, her baby beside her and her noble husband and heir following behind. It's bitter for me to think of him, and the death that he brought on Jane

Because I love you desperately. Because I can't sleep for thinking of you. Because I burn up with desire for you. Because I dare not look at you, because if I did, every man and woman at court would see all that that in my eyes.

I assure him swiftly. 'There is

You're a girl from the House of Lancaster. You cannot fall in love with the heir to the House of York unless he is king victorious, and there is some profit in love for you. These are hard days we are living in. Death is our companion, our familiar. You need not think you can keep Him at arm's length. You will find He bears you close company. He has taken your husband; hear me: He will take your father and your brothers and your sons.

the wedding should be between him, his bride, and God.

We're in this together. This is for all of us: Boleyns and Howards. We all rise or fall on this. We're all waiting and playing the long game. You have to lead the charge, Anne. But we're all behind you." She

Militant might in women is named as unfeminine aggression; scholarship in women is diminished into a domestic art. Religious life is viewed as sexual chastity rather than spiritual awakening to an international philosophy.

Child, you cannot change a king, you can only make him laugh.

I have not slept for nights. I have not eaten for days. I am a soul in torment. Tell me if you think that she loves me, if you think that she might love me. Tell me, for pity's sake.

with onions and carrots drawn up like a retinue

Ne postoji ništa što ?ovek može u?initi nego da podnosi. Možete besneti ili možete plakati, ali na kraju ?ete nau?iti kako to podnosti.

We wait? No! You can wait! The cardinal can wait! Henry can wait! But I have to dance on the spot, I have to be seen to make progress while actually making none.

What will happen when I am old and I can dance no more?

His little gestures of affection, his hand in the small of her aching back, her head brushing his shoulder. When she was with child, she used to cling to him for comfort, and he was always tender with her.

them till the very last moment, and then what did I do but protect the family from

risk to my life, I could not become one of those. I was a young woman living at the very heart of a world that was starting to ask questions, living at a time when men and women thought that questions were the most important thing. And who could say where these questions might take us? The tables that had come from my father for John Dee might contain a