quotes by Margaret George

"So i learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it."
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"Things do not happen, we must make them happen"
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"'When he comes into a room, you give a little gasp, deep inside, far inside,' someone once said when trying to describe what it meant to love."
— Margaret George (Helen of Troy)

"It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown."
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"I had a desire to see something besides my own shores, if only to be content to return to them someday. If I wish to live in my native land and love her, it should not be out of ignorance."
— Margaret George (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles)

"Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths."
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"In my experience, there are two things that no one will admit to: having no sense of humor and being susceptible to flattery."
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"What is one person's diversion may be another's supreme test."
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)

"Hope is a straw hate hanging beside a window covered with frost."
— Margaret George (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles)

"The most wicked criminals have God on their lips at all times, for God is the only one who can stomach them."
— Margaret George (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles)

"I loved him so, even his past was precious to me. I found myself kissing each mark, thinking, I would have had it never happen, I would wish it away, taking him further and further back to a time when he had known no disappointments, no battles, no wounds, as I erased each one. To make him again like Caesarion. Yet if we take the past away from those we love - even to protect them - do we not steal their very selves?"
— Margaret George (The Memoirs of Cleopatra)