“Yes, but either way, shamed or not, I shall be Queen of England, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I will learn to smile at my enemies.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Yes, Your Grace," I correct her. "I am My Lady, the King's Mother, now, and you shall curtsey to me, as low as to a queen of royal blood. This was my destiny: to put my son on the throne of England, and those who laughed at my visions and doubted my vocation will call me My Lady, the King's Mother, and I shall sign myself Margaret Regina: Margaret R.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Do you really think that God in his heaven with all the angels, there from the beginning of time and looking towards the day of judgement day, really looks down on all the world and see's you and little harry and says 'whatever you choose to do is my will?'
"Yes i do." she says uncertainly.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Some of us are born to a solitary life.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I have to say that I am much less impressed by crucifixion now that I am in childbirth. It is really not possible that anything could hurt more than this. I grieve for the suffering of Our Lord, of course. But if He had tried a bad birth He would know what pain is.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I am old enough to be married twice. I am old enough to be bedded without tenderness or consideration. I am old enough to face death in the confinement room and be told that my own mother--my own mother--has commanded them to save the child and not me! I think I am a woman now. I have a babe in arms, and I have been married and widowed and now bethrothed again. I am like a draper's parcel to be sent about like cloth and cut to the pattern that people wish. My mother told me that my father died by his own hand and that we are an unlucky family. I think I am a woman now! I am treated as a woman grown when it suits you all, you can hardly make me a child again.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Insane", he says simply. "Hopeless. The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son his a devil and should not.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“He must desire the scent of the smoke of their sacrifice.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“A troubadour to a distant mistress.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Another husband, another new house, another new country, but I never belong anywhere and I never own anything in my own right.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Mother, before God," I say, my voice shaking with tears, "I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping not to die in childbirth!”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“A parcel--taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will--is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“We will have to cut our coats to suit our cloth, and wait and see.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“How can I bless you when you are cursed in your choice?”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I will go to war should there ever be a cause I think worth dying for--and not before.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“The castle will seem very quiet and strange without you here. The stone stairs and the chapel will miss your footstep, the gateway will will miss your laughter, and the wall will miss your shadow.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I would not care whether people thought I was special, if my life was truly special. It would not mater to me that people could see me as pious, if I could truly live as a woman scholar of piety. I want to be what I seem to be. I act as if I am specially holy, a special girl; but this is what I really want to be. I really do.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I say nothing, not one word, from beginning to end, and neither does he. If it were lawful for a woman to hate her husband, I would hate him as a rapist.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“The common people only see weakness where there is greatness of spirit.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I don't think your God has ever advised you otherwise. You hear only what you want. He only ever commands your preferences.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“Her confidence is extraordinary, her impertinence unforgivable, her words terribly true.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
“I think it is unkind of me to stand there with my hands by my sides and a frown on my face. But I let him go without a blown kiss, without a blessing, without a command to come back safely. I let him go without a word or a gesture of love, for he is going out to fight for my enemy and so he is my enemy now.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen
Philippa Gregory
Born place: in Kenya
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“I have now traveled so far south that I find myself come to a place where our common expression “white as snow” has no useful meaning. Here, one who wishes his words to make plain sense had better say “white as cotton.” I will not say that I find the landscape lovely. We go on through Nature to God, and my Northern eye misses the grandeur that eases that ascent. I yearn for mountains, or at least for the gentle ridges of Massachusetts; the sweet folds and furrows that offer the refreshment of a new vista as each gap or summit is obtained. Here all is obvious, a song upon a single note. One wakes and falls asleep to a green sameness, the sun like a pale egg yolk, peering down from a white sky.
And the river! Water as unlike our clear fast-flowing freshets as a fat broody hen to a hummingbird. Brown as treacle, wider than a harbor, this is water sans sparkle or shimmer. In places, it roils as if heated below by a hidden furnace. In others, it sucks the light down and gives back naught but an inscrutable sheen that conceals both depth and shallows. It is a mountebank, this river. It feigns a gentle lassitude, yet coiled beneath are currents that have crushed the trunks of mighty trees, and swept men to swift drownings…”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from March
“I always think that things have to happen the way they do happen, that there are so many inner and outer forces joining at every event that it becomes a kind of fate. I learned from studying Buddhism that there’s beauty, and certainly a lot of peace, in accepting that.” I sniffed. A smile twinkled sheepishly across his face. “Okay, okay,” he said, “how about this? If you worry about it, you draw it to you.”
― Jane Smiley, quote from A Thousand Acres
“Very slowly Elizabeth leaned forward until her forehead rested on his shoulder, shuddering with pleasure and relief at the feel of him, at his smell.”
― Sara Donati, quote from Into the Wilderness
“Not half as much as I’d miss me if you killed me. (He blinked like a girl and leaned against Ash’s shoulder.) Please don’t hurt me, Ash. Please. I don’t want to die while I’m still a virgin. At least let me get laid before you kill me – which according to my mom I can’t do until I’m married and I can’t do that until I finish college. So you have to wait a good ten years before you snuff me. Deal? (Nick)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Infinity
“The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from Snow
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The Way of ShadowsBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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