“You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“If it means something, take it to heart. If it means nothing, it's nothing. Let it go.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“The world hasn't changed that much; men still rule.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“I am too dark in my heart tonight.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“Some women attract desire. Others do not.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“When it's done, it's done. And no one will know until it's done.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“When they launch snakes you'll have your namesake.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman, and a courtier, and a Howard. That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from 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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“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, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
“Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delight”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory
Born place: in Kenya
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“So when one spring in spite of all this good advice I fell in love, it felt like disaster. I took a tiny bite and it exploded in my stomach. Love splashed through every cranny, hauled on every muscle, unlocked every joint. I was so full of astonishment, I felt ten feet tall. My shoulders itched as if wings might break through.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
“In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in company, in spite of the universal assumption of comradeship, these strange beings remained as remote from one another as the stars. For everyone searched his neighbour’s eyes for the image of himself, and never saw anything else. Or if he did, he was outraged and terrified.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“I know what I want. A full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.”
― Karen Cushman, quote from The Midwife's Apprentice
“That girl has been bad again,” Ramona heard the four-year-old next door say to her little sister.”
― Beverly Cleary, quote from Ramona the Pest
“Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he’d been sick in Debrecen she’d taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he’d be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the tie when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father’s orchard.”
― Julie Orringer, quote from The Invisible Bridge
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