Quotes by Philippa Gregory

And now I wnt love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.

And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.

I wil not heat treason from my own daughterWhat will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at warWe are an army at war! This is your brothers rightful throne that we are talking about

I was born to be your rival, she [Anne] said simply. And you mine. Were sisters, arent we?

Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.

I realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.

All that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see with her own eyes; but this is not their tempo nor their vision and they cannot tolerate any other.

If this is the will of God, it takes a strange and terrible shape. I did not know that the God of Battles was vile like this. I never knew that a saint could summon torment like this.

I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned.

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 kings banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the kings sanctified head?

Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.

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.

You are my heart. Even if you are a broken heart

I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch.‘Anne, will you marry me?’ he asks simply, as he kneels before me.

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.

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

The moment that changed me for ever was when I had my first seminar with my history professor at the University of Sussex. I realised that history would answer all the questions I had spent my life asking. It was an extraordinary moment.

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

“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.”