“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 had meant my promise to George. I had said that I was, before anything else, a Boleyn and a Howard through and through; but now, sitting in th shadowy room, looking out over the gray slates of the city, and up at the dark clouds leaning on the roof of Westminster Palace, I suddenly realized that George was wrong, and that my family was wrong, and that I had been wrong-- for all my life. I was not a Howard before anything else. 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 didn't want the rewards for which Anne had surrendered her youth. I didn' want the arid glamour of George's life, 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.”

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“If I were a woman. I need to be loved a great deal. My great problem is to be loved more, and that's why I write.”

“An error of the passions is not the flowering of a great love, and merely the beauty of the human form is not capable of inspiring an eternity of mad attachment.”

“A great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Ben wasn’t what I wanted or needed. I wanted someone who knew me, the real me. I needed the person who knew all my secrets and fears. I wanted a person who lived and fought passionately. I wanted my best friend.”