326 Quotes by Philippa Gregory

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?

I did not seek love with Thomas, but I did not resist it. And now I am trapped in desire like a butterfly with its feet in honey, and the more I struggle, the deeper I sink.

A single man’s imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.

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

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that marriage is a sacrament,” Anne replies. “It was not God who joined us together. The priest says it was; but this is not true. This is the word of the church, not the Bible. Our wedding, like every wedding, was an act of man, not of God. It was not a holy sacrament.

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.

Either you have me or not at all. Either you love me or not at all. Either I am all yours or I am nobody’s. I will have no half-measures with you.

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

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.