Quotes from Philippa Gregory

God does not make the way smooth for those He loves. He sends hardships to try them. Those that God loves the best are those who suffer the worst.

Every woman is a mad ugly bad old witch somewhere in her heart.

Keep him coming forward but never let him think that you come forward yourself. He wants to feel that he is pursuing you, not that you are entrapping him. When he gives you the choice of coming forward or running away, like then—you must always run away.But don't run too fast. Remember he has to catch you.

It is always harder to make time for the truly precious experiences; there is always the ordinary to do.

In a shipwreck, it is every drowning man for himself.

Do you not think that God will protect us?" "No," he said flatly. "My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.

She has a smile that grows slowly and then shines, like an angel's smile.

I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel and started to walk away.

I don't know how much we will rise, I say stoutly. And I have no fear of falling. He looks at me. You are ambitious to rise? We are all on fortune's wheel, I say. Without a doubt we will rise. We may fall. But still I have no fear of it.

Do you really think that God in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the day of judgement day, really looks down on all the world and see's you and little harry and says 'whatever you choose to do is my will?' Yes i do. she says uncertainly.

My honour and my pride are in my heart, and not in what the world says.

I feel as if I can think only when I see the words flowing from the nib of my quill, that my thoughts make sense only when they are black ink on cream paper. I love the sensation of a thought in my head and the vision of the word on the page.

I have seen statues that would look stodgy beside her, I have seen painted Madonnas whose features would be coarse beside her pale luminous loveliness.

You're not cursed daughter, you are the finest and rarest of all my children, the most beautiful, the most beloved. You know that. What curse could stick to you?' The gaze she turns on me is darkened with horror as if she has seen her own death. 'You will never surrender, you will never let us be. Your ambition will be the death of my brothers, and when they are dead you will put me on the throne. You would rather have the throne than your sons.

He has lost his print upon the earth; he has lost any fire.

Thomas More once told me: lion or king, never show fear or you are a dead man.

One's lover is one's partner in observing and understanding the world. Marriage is a place where joint narratives are composed. If the lover is a liar then all your joint observations are unreliable. You will have to start all over again.

In a world where women were bought and sold as horses I had found a man I loved; and married for love. I would never suggest that this was a mistake.

But I warn you that a woman who seeks great power and wealth has to pay a great price, Perhaps you will be a great woman like Melusina, or Yolande, or like me; but you will be like all women; uneasy in the world of men.

I am sorry for you. And I am sorry for me. When you are sent back to me, perhaps a month from now, perhaps a year, I will try to remember this day, and you looking like a child, a little lost among all these clothes. I will try to remember that you were innocent of any plotting; that today at least, you were more a girl than a Boleyn.

We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more than men.

I have to say that I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this. I grieve for the suffering of Our Lord, of course. But if He had tried a bad birth He would know what pain is.

My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.

If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal.