Philippa Gregory > Quotes

“For Harry Potter I have all the time in the world.”
― Philippa Gregory

“You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, its nothing. Let it go.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't 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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“Jane," I said quietly.
She opened her eyes, she had been far away in prayer.
"Yes, Mary? Forgive me, I was praying."
"If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.”
― Philippa Gregory

“The world hasn't changed that much; men still rule.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition”
― Philippa Gregory

“He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The White Queen

“Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.”
― Philippa Gregory

“When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen

“Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen

“...you have to have faith that you are doing God's will. Sometimes you will not understand. Sometimes you will doubt. But if you are doing God's will, you can't be wrong, you can't go wrong.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Constant Princess

“Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Constant Princess

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“I have learned the power of surviving.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance

“I woke at dawn every morning to his touch, the delight of his warmth and the heady smell of his skin. I had never before lain with a man who had loved me completely, for myself, and it was a dizzy experience. I had never lain with a man whose touch I adored without any need to hide my adoration, or exaggerate it, or adjust it at all. I simply loved him as if he were my one and only lover, and he loved me too with the same simplicty of appetite and disire which made me wonder what I thought I had been doing all those years when I had been dealing in the false coin of vanity and lust. I had not known then that all along there had been this other currency of pure gold.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.”
― Philippa Gregory, The White Queen

“Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“I shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Queen's Fool

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Virgin's Lover

“A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen

“I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?”
― Philippa Gregory, The Constant Princess

“Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies”
― Philippa Gregory, The Constant Princess

“When they launch snakes you'll have your namesake.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance

“I am too dark in my heart tonight.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“I have given my word that only death will take me from you”
― Philippa Gregory

“For most of my life i have been adored by fools and hated by people of good sense, and they all make up stories about me in which I am either a saint or a whore. But I am above these judgments, I am a Queen.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen

“Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.'
I should be honored, Your Majesty.'
I want to give you a little carved stool from my privy chambers. A pretty little piece from France. I hope you will like it.'
I should be grateful.'
It is for your daughter. For Jane. To sit on. She seems not to have a seat of her own but she must borrow mine.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“We're 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.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen

“I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“...Your trouble, William, is that you have no ambition. You don't see that there is in life only ever one goal.' 'And what is that?'
More', George said simply. 'Just more of anything. More of everything.”
― Philippa Gregory

“I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under a shawl then she could not be seen.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.'

After being blindfolded and kneeling at the block, she repeated several times:
To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“Some women attract desire. Others do not.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

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

“Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delight”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“When it's done, it's done. And no one will know until it's done.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

“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.”
― Philippa Gregory

“the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it”
― Philippa Gregory, The White Queen

“The wheel of fortune [...] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers

“The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.”
― Philippa Gregory, The White Queen