Top 200 Philippa Gregory Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “He greeted Anne with a roar of joy, swept her up and kissed her. You would think he had never been Sir Loyal Heart to his Queen Katherine. You would think it had been his worst enemy who had died and not a woman who had loved him faithfully for twenty-seven years and died with a blessing for him on her lips.”

— Philippa Gregory

152. “There is nothing that sickens a country more than its own people fighting against one another. It destroys families; it is killing us daily.”

— Philippa Gregory

153. “Getting a woman into power is not the point – it’s getting a good woman into power who thinks and cares about what she does.”

— Philippa Gregory

154. “I have a longing for you, Lady Elizabeth Grey, that I have never felt for any woman before. Will you come to me? I ask it not as a king, and not even as a soldier who might die in battle, but as a simple man to the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Come to me, I beg you, come to me. It could be my last wish. Will you come to me tonight?”

— Philippa Gregory

155. “You look as if you would eat me up,” he says. “I would,” I say. “I cannot think how to sate my desire for you. I think I will have to keep you prisoner here and eat you up in little cutlets, day after day.” “If I kept you prisoner, I would devour you in one greedy swallow,” he chuckles. “But you would not get out till you were with child.”

— Philippa Gregory

156. “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

157. “There was a magic: and the name of it was love.”

— Philippa Gregory

158. “For a moment we glared at each other, stubborn as cats on the stable wall, full of mutual resentment and something darker, the old sense between sisters that there is only really room in the world for one girl. The sense that every fight could be to the death.”

— Philippa Gregory

159. “Before God, I love you and cherish you more than anything in the world. Of course I want to marry you. I love you heart and soul.”

— Philippa Gregory

160. “However heart-stopping his smile and however honest his eyes, however much I think of him as a boy fired to greatness by his own ambition, I cannot trust him.”

— Philippa Gregory

161. “I was born to be Queen of England and mother of the next King of England. I have to fulfill my destiny, it is my God-given destiny.”

— Philippa Gregory

162. “It is the old smile of gritty courage that all women show who have gone through hard nights and come out without betrayal.”

— Philippa Gregory

163. “He will come to trust you, perhaps,” she says. “If you have years together. You may grow to be a loving husband and wife, if you have long enough. And if I never tell you anything, then there will never be a moment where you have to lie to him. Or worse – never a moment when you have to choose where your loyalties lie. I wouldn’t want you to have to choose between your father’s family and your husband’s. I wouldn’t want you to have to choose between the claims of your little son and another.” I.”

— Philippa Gregory

164. “What a test of love it is, when the beloved is less than perfect.”

— Philippa Gregory

165. “When you are still and thoughtful you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy.”

— Philippa Gregory

166. “Stars in the night,′ he said. ‘Something something something something, some delight.”

— Philippa Gregory

167. “You will be the mother of the next King of England,” she declares. “The red rose and the white, a rose without a thorn. You will have a son, and we will call him Arthur of England.” She takes my hands. “This is your destiny, my daughter. I will help you.”

— Philippa Gregory

168. “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

169. “People always make up stories about princesses. It comes to us with the crown. We have to carry it as lightly as we can.”

— Philippa Gregory

170. “There is no one who loves peace more than a soldier.”

— Philippa Gregory

171. “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.”

— Philippa Gregory

172. “But I warn you that a woman who seeks great power and wealth has to pay a great price, Perhaps you will be a great woman like Melusina, or Yolande, or like me; but you will be like all women; uneasy in the world of men.”

— Philippa Gregory

173. “If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal.”

— Philippa Gregory

174. “The queen sees me coming, turns toward us and waits, with a killer’s patience, for me to reach the chancel steps.”

— Philippa Gregory

175. “I looked over to Anne. She was untying her mask and watching me with a long calculating look, the Boleyn look, the Howard look that says: what has happened here, and how may I turn it to my advantage? It was as if under her golden mask was another beautiful mask of skin, and only beneath that was the real woman.”

— Philippa Gregory

176. “I was not nervous. For the first time ever I felt as if I had taken my life into my own hands and I could command my own destiny. For once I was obedient neither to uncle nor father nor king, but following my own desires. And I knew that my desire led me, inexorably, to the man I loved. I.”

— Philippa Gregory

177. “There are many sorts of love,” she counsels me. “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.”

— Philippa Gregory

178. “I would rather see you dead at my feet than dishonored.”

— Philippa Gregory

179. “We are both people of faith,” he said quietly. “Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.”

— Philippa Gregory

180. “We are Plantagenets – we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.”

— Philippa Gregory

181. “To do one man’s bidding to please another man and get nothing for yourself but heartbreak.”

— Philippa Gregory

182. “She doesn’t realize yet though men go to war it is the women who suffer – perhaps more than anyone.”

— Philippa Gregory

183. “He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.”

— Philippa Gregory

184. “She has followed me into every single room in this palace, and then she followed Anne Neville when she was her lady-in-waiting, too. She walked behind Anne at her coronation, carrying the train. Perhaps Lady Margaret is feeling that it’s her turn to be the first lady now, and she wants someone trailing along behind her.”

— Philippa Gregory

185. “She did not want him to know that she was not his beloved little sister any more but a woman who had learned to throw everything, even her mortal soul, into the battle to become queen.”

— Philippa Gregory

186. “I find I must prepare for my death. I don’t fear it. Ever since I lost my son I have been weary to my soul, and I think, when it finally comes, it will be a lying down to sleep without fear of dreams, without fear of waking. I am ready to lie down to sleep. I am tired.”

— Philippa Gregory

187. “It’s such a pointless unhappiness. I am so tired of it. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I am so tired of being unhappy.”

— Philippa Gregory

188. “I don’t ask for more than a smile and to be in your prayers. I love from afar.”

— Philippa Gregory

189. “He knew as well as I did that you cannot release a girl from her promise to love a man. She either gets herself free or she is bound for life.”

— Philippa Gregory

190. “If you hate a woman, the first thing you destroy is her reputation.”

— Philippa Gregory

191. “I do not prepare for defeat. To do so would be to betray myself.”

— Philippa Gregory

192. “Twelfth night, of all the nights of the year, is one where shapes shift and identities flicker.”

— Philippa Gregory

193. “Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.”

— Philippa Gregory

194. “He has such kind eyes.” “Certainly he has eyes, but they do not have the power of emotion, only of sight.”

— Philippa Gregory

195. “But you remember this – great wealth or position is not a right, and you don’t deserve it however hard you work. It is chance, and the labor of others, that brings a man wealth. Don’t forget that others have earned your fortune for you. Never imagine you deserve it.”

— Philippa Gregory

196. “I kneel on the planks for her blessing, and then sit beside her with my feet dangling over the edge and my own reflection looking up at me as if I were a water goddess living under the river, waiting to be released from an enchantment, and not a spinster princess that nobody wants.”

— Philippa Gregory

197. “At the thought of her death I felt a confusing pang of genuine distress mixed with elation.”

— Philippa Gregory

198. “However much I might please Henry, he was still her boy – her lovely indulged spoilt golden boy. He might summon me or any other girl to his room, without disturbing the constant steady affection between them which had sprung from her ability, long ago, to love this man who was more foolish, more selfish, and less of a prince than she was a princess.”

— Philippa Gregory

199. “It’s as if our name is both our greatest pride and our curse,” I say.”

— Philippa Gregory

200. “No,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll ever have a fancy for a man.” “Hard luck on the man who loves you,” Will offered neutrally. “Very,” I said. I shot a sideways look at him. “A disaster for the man who loves me,” I repeated. “If he married me he would find me always cold. If he did not, he could waste his life in loving me and I would never return it.”

— Philippa Gregory