Philippa Gregory Quotes

Luca saw her bloodstained hands as the clerk bound them with a rope, and Luca realized that she was a thing of horror, a beautiful thing of horror, the worst thing between heaven and hell: a fallen angel. ~ Philippa Gregory

One never gets the same summer twice. ~ Philippa Gregory

Funny sky,' he said, squinting up at the thick-bellied white clouds and the sun shining so hot on them but not breaking through.
'It feels as if there should be a storm,' I said 'but it was like this at haymaking and the weather never properly broke then.'
'If I was at sea I should run for a port,' Ralph said. He was looking towards the horizon where there was a yellow tinge to the sky over the top of the downs. ~ Philippa Gregory

I told you, I don't want you riding with me."
"Which is why I waited," Frieze explained patiently. "To see what direction you were going in, so that I could make sure I took the opposite one. but of course, there may be wolves, or thieves, highwaymen or brigands, so I don't mind your company for the first hour or so. ~ Philippa Gregory

Is that it?" he demanded, in sudden rage. "Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, married to a snake and in love with a heartbreaker, but only, only, that Mistress Anne Boleyn's reputation must be without blemish." At once she flew at him, her hands spread like claws, and he caught her wrists before she could rake his face. "Look at me!" she hissed. "Didn't I give up my only love, didn't I break my heart? Didn't you tell me then that it was worth the price?" He held her away but she was unstoppable. "Look at Mary! Didn't we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don't whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone." George ~ Philippa Gregory

I am happy; I am in his arms, my face crushed against his padded jacket, his arms around me as tight as a bear, so that I cannot breathe. When I look up into his beloved weary face, he kisses me so hard that I close my eyes and think myself a besotted girl again. I catch a breath, and he kisses me some more. ~ Philippa Gregory

Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.'
I should be honored, Your Majesty.'
I want to give you a little carved stool from my privy chambers. A pretty little piece from France. I hope you will like it.'
I should be grateful.'
It is for your daughter. For Jane. To sit on. She seems not to have a seat of her own but she must borrow mine. ~ Philippa Gregory

~My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.
~Will there be another battle?
~Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king's banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king's sanctified head? ~ Philippa Gregory

You have to have faith that you are doing God's will. Sometimes you will not understand. Sometimes you will doubt. But if you are doing God's will, you can't be wrong, you can't go wrong. ~ Philippa Gregory

I cannot be your mistress," I say simply. "I would rather die than dishonor my name. I cannot bring that shame on my family." I pause. I am anxious not to be too discouraging. "Whatever I might wish in my heart," I say very softly. ~ Philippa Gregory

I will stand up and speak in my own voice and no man will ever silence me again. ~ Philippa Gregory

The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy. ~ Philippa Gregory

God has not given this false marriage his blessing. Every year he has turned his face from me and I should have seen it earlier. The queen is not my wife, she is Arthur's wife. ~ Philippa Gregory

I woke at dawn every morning to his touch, the delight of his warmth and the heady smell of his skin. I had never before lain with a man who had loved me completely, for myself, and it was a dizzy experience. I had never lain with a man whose touch I adored without any need to hide my adoration, or exaggerate it, or adjust it at all. I simply loved him as if he were my one and only lover, and he loved me too with the same simplicty of appetite and disire which made me wonder what I thought I had been doing all those years when I had been dealing in the false coin of vanity and lust. I had not known then that all along there had been this other currency of pure gold. ~ Philippa Gregory

I don't want to help, I want to hinder. I adore your hair, I like to see it loose. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

He had that York gift, didn't he?" he presses me. "Of making people love him? Like your father King Edward did? Like you have? It's a blessing, there's no real sense to it. It's just that some men have a charm, don't they? And then people follow them? People just follow them?" I ~ Philippa Gregory

I knew now what my earlier passion for Harry had hidden from me. That although I had bedded him as a free woman I was as bound as if I were the slave. For it was not a free choice. I had wanted him because he was the Squire, not for himself ... And it was no free choice, because I could not choose to say "No." My safety and security on the land meant I had to keep my special, costly hold on its owner. I paid him rent as surely as the tenants who came to my round rent table with their coins tied up in a scrap of cloth. When I lay on my back, or strode round the room threatening him with every imaginable, ridiculous torment, I was paying my dues. And the knowledge galled me. ~ Philippa Gregory

I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction. If ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

The mown grass is growing again nearly to our knees; we will take a second crop of hay from this field, rich and green and starred with moon daisies, buttercups and the bright, blowsy heads of poppies. ~ Philippa Gregory

I wil not heat treason from my own daughter
What will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at war
We are an army at war! This is your brother's rightful throne that we are talking about ~ Philippa Gregory

Her confidence is extraordinary, her impertinence unforgivable, her words terribly true. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family. ~ Philippa Gregory

Ah, my dear. Sometimes God takes the most precious children to his own. ~ Philippa Gregory

The moonlight on the water outside the chamber window throws the reflection of ripples onto the whitewashed ceiling of the room, so they look as if they are underwater, floating with Melusina in the fountain. But I know that they are both gone from me, and our water mother is singing them on their journey down the sweet river to the deep springs of home. ~ Philippa Gregory

For these are true boys and they draw dirt to them as if by magic. ~ Philippa Gregory

I want to teach him his prayers and his letters and his manners. I want him for my own. Not just because he is motherless, but because I am childless and I want someone to love. ~ Philippa Gregory

I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love. ~ Philippa Gregory

The law is what powerful men say it shall be. ~ Philippa Gregory

Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound? ~ Philippa Gregory

you are my joy. You are worth tens of thousands. ~ Philippa Gregory

I feel no peace, I feel nothing. I think I will feel nothing forever. ~ Philippa Gregory

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

A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

of the ancient cities of Greece and ~ Philippa Gregory

Some of us are born to a solitary life. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

You have to sit with your longing and know that you may not get what you want; you have to encounter the danger of longing for something without the expectation of getting your desire. ~ Philippa Gregory

Jane had gone to pray for the dead queen, Anne would dance on her grave. The ~ Philippa Gregory

It's still woman's work whether it's done in a great hall or in the kitchen," I said bitterly. "I know it well enough. It's earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It's obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It's having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I've served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I've seen how life has been for her. I wouldn't be a princess, not even for a princess's dowry. I wouldn't even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her. ~ Philippa Gregory

Her sadness had given her a serenity which had not been there before. It was as if she had learned a hard lesson: that chances in life would not fall into her lap like ripe cherries. ~ Philippa Gregory

Jane," I said quietly.
She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer.
"Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying."
"If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out. ~ Philippa Gregory

Anne shook her head. "I'll not be safe until she is dead," she said. "Just as she will not be safe until I am dead. It is not just a matter now of a man or a throne, it is as if I am her shadow and she is mine. We are locked together till death. One of us has to win outright and neither of us can be sure that we have won or lost until the other is dead and in the ground. ~ Philippa Gregory

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter."
"And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted.
"Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make. ~ Philippa Gregory

It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom. ~ Philippa Gregory

Come back to me." He laughs. It is not forced; it is the laugh of a happy man, confident in his luck and his abilities. "I will," he says. "Trust me. You have married a man who is going to die in his bed, preferably after making love to the most beautiful woman in England." He holds out his arms and I step towards him and feel the warmth of his embrace. "Make sure you do," I say. "And I will make sure that the most beautiful woman in your eyes is always me. ~ Philippa Gregory

and presses them against his ~ Philippa Gregory

If you mean Charles Stuart,' Frances's voice rang out clearly in the hall, 'then calling him "he of whom you were speaking" is hardly a brilliant disguise. And if that is your idea of deep concealment then I don't anticipate great success, on the day of which you have spoken, or any other day, actually. ~ Philippa Gregory

You've always been one of many," she said brutally. "There are dozens of us Howard girls, all with good breeding, all well taught, all pretty, all young, all fertile. They can throw one after another on the table and see if one is lucky. It's no real loss to them if one after another is taken up and then thrown aside. There's always another Howard girl conceived, there's always another whore in the nursery. You were one of many before you were even born. If he does not cleave to you then you go back to William, they find another Howard girl to tempt him, and the dance starts all over again. ~ Philippa Gregory

The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy. ~ Philippa Gregory

Discover new countries, and bring back wealth. My work is closer to home. I build, I establish, ~ Philippa Gregory

Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. The main thing is that we always, we always go on. ~ Philippa Gregory

Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

He is a sodomite, and my sister is a whore, and perhaps a poisoner, and I am a whore. My uncle has been the falsest of friends, my father a time-server, my mother - God knows - some even say she had the king before the two of us! All of this you knew or you could have deduced. Now tell me, am I good enough for you? For I knew that you were a nobody and I came to find you all the same. If you want to rise to be a somebody in this court you will get blood or shit on your hands. I have had to learn this through a hard apprenticeship since I was a little girl. You can learn it now if you have the stomach." William ~ Philippa Gregory

Them till the very last moment, and then what did I do but protect the family from ~ Philippa Gregory

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

I feel very strongly that history has mostly been written by men, and even when it is not prejudiced against women it is dominated by a male perspective and male morality. Some of my heroines have been considered simply unimportant - like Mary Boleyn or Katherine Howard - and some of them have been stereotyped - like Anne of Cleves and Katherine of Aragon. I don't start with a determination of putting the record straight, but when I read terribly prejudiced misjudgments of women I cannot help but consider what they would really have been like - and writing them back into the history. ~ Philippa Gregory

A steady love, a faithful love, a wife's love is the best. ~ Philippa Gregory

I have given my word that only death will take me from you. ~ Philippa Gregory

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian. ~ Philippa Gregory

You must use what you have,' he says, the advice of a good man to a whore for time immemorial. 'You must use what you are allowed. ~ Philippa Gregory

People always make up stories about princesses. It comes to us with the crown. We have to carry it as lightly as we can. ~ Philippa Gregory

And – I think you know, don't you? – that I love you, Anne.'

I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father's when he sailed for England. 'You do? Truly?'

'I do.' He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. 'Will you marry me?' he whispers.

'Yes,' I say. ~ Philippa Gregory

She's like an anchor that he has forgotten, but still it keeps him steady. ~ Philippa Gregory

Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him. ~ Philippa Gregory

Ill wishing is a curse on the woman who does it, as well as the one who receives it. When you put such words out in the world, they can overshoot-like an arrow. A curse can go beyond your target and harm another. A wise woman curses very sparingly. I would hope that you never curse at all."
"Bless you my daughter, and may you remain pure in heart and get your desires. ~ Philippa Gregory

In truth, I did not have to wonder. She would be feeling that disturbing mixture of emotions that she always summoned from me: admiration and envy, pride and a furious rivalry, a longing to see a beloved sister succeed, and a passionate desire to see a rival fall. ~ Philippa Gregory

I have the Sight, I should have seen it all, but some things are too dark to forsee. These are hard times, and England is a country of sorrows. No mother can be sure that she will not bury her sons. When a country is at war, cousin against cousin, brother against brother, no boy is safe. ~ Philippa Gregory

The two women look at each other and in both faces there is a glimpse of the girls that they were. A little smile warms Margaret's face and Jacquetta's eyes are filled with love. It is as if the years are no more than the mists of Barnet or the snows at Towton: they are gone, it is hard to believe they were ever there. Margaret puts out her hand, not to touch her friend but to make a gesture, a secret shared gesture, and, as we watch, Jacquetta mirrors the movement. Eyes fixed on each other they both raise their index finger and trace a circle in the air – that's all they do. Then they smile to each other as if life itself is a joke, a jest that means nothing and a wise woman can laugh at it; then, without a word, Margaret passes silently into the darkness of the tower.

'What was that?' Isabel exclaims.

'It was the sign for the wheel of fortune,' I whisper. 'The wheel of fortune which put Margaret of Anjou on the throne of England, heiress to the kingdoms of Europe, and then threw her down to this. Jacquetta warned her of this long ago – they knew. The two of them knew long ago that fortune throws you up to greatness and down to disaster and all you can do is endure. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

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

Jane would be the next queen and her children, when she had them, would be the next princes or princesses. Or she might wait, as the other queens had waited, every month, desperate to know that she had conceived, knowing each month that it did not happen that Henry's love wore a little thinner, that his patience grew a little shorter. Or Anne's curse of death in childbed, and death to her son, might come true. I did not envy Jane Seymour. I had seen two queens married to King Henry and neither of them had much joy of it. ~ Philippa Gregory

I am so tired; all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep all the day, from dawn until twilight that every evening comes a little earlier and a little more drearily. In the daytime, all I can think about is sleeping. But in the night I do is try to stay awake. ~ Philippa Gregory

I love reading and I love thinking - the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time. ~ Philippa Gregory

Nobody gets to be Queen of England by being loveable. You will have to play your cards right. ~ Philippa Gregory

What a test of love it is, when the beloved is less than perfect. ~ Philippa Gregory

Compared with the rest of us she was silver, while we were pewter, a common mixture of lead and tin. ~ Philippa Gregory

Grief had refined her girlish prettiness, she had the clear decided looks of a woman who had seen her hopes destroyed. ~ Philippa Gregory

It is luck to love someone who is free to love you in return. ~ Philippa Gregory

her beauty completely erased by jealousy. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against. ~ Philippa Gregory

This is God's victory: not mine. ~ Philippa Gregory

I like writing historical fiction. ~ Philippa Gregory

I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work. ~ Philippa Gregory

I would like you to have a beautiful day every day. ~ Philippa Gregory

I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under a shawl then she could not be seen. ~ Philippa Gregory

I had a small looking glass on the wall and I stood before it and gazed at my own reflection. ~ Philippa Gregory

Never see them again. Surely, a couple so young, so ~ Philippa Gregory

He will never understand what happened that day between a young man and a young woman. There was a magic: and the name of it was love. ~ Philippa Gregory

I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at at a man for his help. ~ Philippa Gregory

If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, it's nothing. Let it go. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

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. ~ Philippa Gregory

We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels? ~ Philippa Gregory