Philippa Gregory

“I don't think your God has ever advised you otherwise. You hear only what you want. He only ever commands your preferences.”

“We will have to cut our coats to suit our cloth, and wait and see.”

“The common people only see weakness where there is greatness of spirit.”

“I would not care whether people thought I was special, if my life was truly special. It would not mater to me that people could see me as pious, if I could truly live as a woman scholar of piety. I want to be what I seem to be. I act as if I am specially holy, a special girl; but this is what I really want to be. I really do.”

“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.”

“And it seems to me that there is nothing more likely to cure a woman of lust than marriage. Now I understand what the saint meant when he said that it was better to marry than to burn. In my experience, if you marry, you certainly won't burn.”

“If He were not God, then one would think it very badly planned.”

“I am sure your piety does you great credit, Margaret. But certainly, if God is speaking to the king, then He has not chosen the best time for this conversation.”

“When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.”

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

“Никой не трябва да ме съжалява. Могат да ме обичат, или да ме мразят, или да се страхуват от мен. Но никога няма да позволя на някого да ме съжалява.”

“I want to take you for pleasure, and hold you in my arms for desire. I want you to know that it is your kiss that I want, not another heir to the throne. You can know that I love you, quite for yourself, when I come to your bed, and not as the York’s broodmare.”I tilt back my head and look at him under my eyelashes. “You think to bed me for love and not for children? Isn’t that sin?”His arm comes around my waist and his palm cups my breast. “I shall make sure that it feels richly sinful.”

“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.”

“But I don't forget and I don't forgive.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I put the charm bracelet away in the purse and return it to my jewel case. I don't need a spell to foresee the future; I am going to make it happen.”

“We say that we are rulers of this country, but we do not make a rule of law. We say that we command these people, but we do not lead them to peace or prosperity. We,their own lords, quarrel among ourselves, and bring death to their door, as if our opinions and thoughts and dreams are worth far more than their safety and health and children.”

“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.”

“Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that govern the world, and then want to own them and keep them secret. Everything they discover,they hug to themselves: they shape knowledge into their own selfish image. What is left to us women but the realms of the unknown?”

“Take care with your words, Jacquetta, especially in cursing. Only say the things you mean, make sure you lay your curse on the right man. For be very sure that 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 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.”

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

“She was like a mother to me...and I betrayed as a daughter will betray her mother and yet, never stop loving her.”

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

“There are women that men marry and there are women that men don't," Anne pronouned. "And you are the sort of mistress a man doesn't bother to marry. Sons or no sons." "Yes," Mary said. "I expect your right. But there clearly is a third sort and that is the woman that men neither marry or take as their mistress. Woman that go home ...alone for Xmas. And thats seems to be you my dear sister. Good day.”

“We are both people of faith," he said quietly. "Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.”

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

“This child could not command a pet dove."Harsh but true, lol!”

“Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.”

“If there is love enough,then nothing-not nature, not even death itself- can come between two who love each other.”

“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.”

“For I am in love. For the first time in my life, utterly and completely, I have fallen in love, and I can not believe it myself.”

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

“But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.”

“She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.”

“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.”

“It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?”

“A troubadour to a distant mistress.”

“the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it”

“Mas, entre nós, nunca houve tempo para as palavras de amor; a maior parte do nosso tempo foi gasta em despedidas.”

“There will be hundreds of sons making the same journey,' he says. 'All of us riding with broken hearts, all of us thinking of vengeance. 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.”

“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?”

“He must desire the scent of the smoke of their sacrifice.”

“Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.”

“In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.”

“When you pray, you know that you want something, that's always the first step. to let yourself know that you want something, that you yearn for it. sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. Because you have to have courage to know what you desire. You have to have courage to acknowledge that you are unhappy without it.”

“I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.”

“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.”