Philippa Gregory
Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.Collection: Romantic
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.Collection: Home
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 like writing historical fiction.
I would be very, very uncomfortable at teaching, at dreaming to teach, people things.
I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.
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.
At the end of the day, I'm writing in a genre that isn't highly regarded.
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.
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.
If I could change one thing about myself I'd be less highly strung. I find my sensibility quite high maintenance.
Being a stepmother has worked out very well for me. I love my stepchildren very much.
I don't shop as much as a lot of people but I do like designer clothes.
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.
I try to go to the gym three times a week, and I swim, too.
I would never lie to anyone about history.
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.
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.
You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambitionCollection: Ambition
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.Collection: Husband
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?Collection: Sweet
You can smile when your heart is breaking because you're a woman.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Faces
Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Weight
When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.Collection: Clever
Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have.Collection: Mean
A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Daughter
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.Collection: Powerful
Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Magic
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.Collection: Victory
the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire itCollection: Bird
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.Collection: Rejection
One never gets the same summer twice.Collection: Summer
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.Collection: Men
If there is love enough,then nothing-not nature, not even death itself- can come between two who love each other.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Country
It is no small thing, this, for a woman: freedom.Collection: Small Things
I have learned the power of surviving.Collection: I Have Learned
Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delightCollection: Stars
Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.Collection: Girl
When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.Collection: Looks
She was like a mother to me...and I betrayed as a daughter will betray her mother and yet, never stop loving her.Collection: Daughter
We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.Collection: Queens
But I don't forget and I don't forgive.Collection: Forgiving