Quotes by Philippa Gregory

He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.

I cant sleep, I cant eat, I cant do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.

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.

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

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.

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

The truth is the last thing that matters, she said. And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.

When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.

Were going Anne said firmly. So soon? Percy pleaded. But stars come out at night.Then they fade at dawn, Anne replied. This star needs to veil herself in darkness.

He had taken George, my beloved George, from me. And he had taken my other self: Anne.

Poor little girl. Poor little girl, Nan says, and at first I think she is speaking of the baby, perhaps it is a girl after all. But then I realize she is speaking of me, a girl of thirteen years, whose own mother has said that they can let her die as long as a son and heir is born.

This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow.

Stars in the night, he said. Something something something something, some delight

Men die in battle women die in childbirth.

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.

I have heard ballads of great battles, and poems about the beauty of a charge and the grace of a leader. But I did not know that war was nothing more than butchery, as savage and unskilled as sticking a pig in the throat and leaving it to bleed to make the meat tender. I did not know that the style and nobility of the jousting arena had nothing to do with this thrust and stab. Just like killing a screaming piglet for bacon after chasing it round the sty. And I did not know that war thrilled men so: they come home laughing like schoolboys after a prank; but they have blood on their hands and a smear of something on their cloaks and the smell of smoke in their hair and a terrible ugly excitement on their faces.I understand now why they break into convents, force women against their will, defy sanctuary to finish the killing chase. They arouse in themselves a wild vicious hunger more like animals than men. I did not know war was like this. I feel I have been a fool not to know, since I was raised in a kingdom at war and am the daughter of a man captured in battle, the widow of a night, the wife of a merciless solider. But I know now.

The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son is a devil and should not.

When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.

War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

There is no one who loves peace more than a soldier