Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by Philippa Gregory

I don't shop as much as a lot of people but I do like designer clothes.

I would never lie to anyone about history.

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.

The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.

For instance, I have never believed that there is only one person for each person in the world. It doesn't make the least sense to me. However, in reality, I fell in love at 45 and I am absolutely certain that my now husband is the only man in the world for me, a truth I find both ridiculous and uplifting.

At the end of the day, I'm writing in a genre that isn't highly regarded.

I don't much like Singapore. It's very big, very modern and very urbanised. As a rule, I prefer older places where you get a sense of the history.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

I love reading and I love thinking - the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.

I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.

I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult as writing either history or fiction.

I try to go to the gym three times a week, and I swim, too.

Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there.

If I could change one thing about myself I'd be less highly strung. I find my sensibility quite high maintenance.

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

I like writing historical fiction.

It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.

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

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter." "And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted. "Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make.

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.

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?

He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?

A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

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.

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.

When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.

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.

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,” - Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville -

Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your rights.

One’s lover is one’s partner in observing and understanding the world. Marriage is a place where joint narratives are composed. If the lover is a liar then all your joint observations are unreliable. You will have to start all over again.

Fortune's wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.

Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day.

I have given my word that only death will take me from you.

If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, it's nothing. Let it go.

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

One never gets the same summer twice.

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.

I am too dark in my heart tonight.

I have learned the power of surviving.

Edward lives as if there is no tomorrow, Richard as if he wants no tomorrow, and George as though someone should give it to him for free.

You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.

Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.

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.

He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.

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.

I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.

They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.

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

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

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.

There are many sorts of love. And when you love a man who is less than you dreamed, you have to make allowances for the difference between a real man and a dream. Sometimes you have to forgive him. Perhaps you even have to forgive him often. But forgiveness often comes with love.