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.
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.
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.
I have given my word that only death will take me from you.
I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at at a man for his help.
Do you not think that God will protect us?”“No,” he said flatly. “My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.
The truth is the last thing that matters,’ she said. ‘And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.
When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.
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.
He had taken George, my beloved George, from me. And he had taken my other self: Anne.
Stars in the night,’ he said. ‘Something something something something, some delight
The king is a saint and cannot rule, and his son is a devil and should not.
When he told me that he would fight forever, I knew that he would have to be defeated.
War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.
There is no one who loves peace more than a soldier
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.
He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.
My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.
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!
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.
Every woman is a mad ugly bad old witch somewhere in her heart.
Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.
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.
Perhaps we will not be great people, chosen by God, but just happy.
I will stand up and speak in my own voice and no man will ever silence me again.
I feel no peace, I feel nothing. I think I will feel nothing forever.
I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood-an older girl would have understood long before-that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. he desired me. I desired him. All I had to do was tell him the truth.
They are a couple in love, and anyone but a fool would see it is simply that, nothing more- and certainly nothing less.
We are not ordered by God to judge each other. We are not even ordered by him to consider another person’s sin. We are ordered by God to let Him consider it, to let Him be judge.
You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise…guided by your own virtue and highest ambition
Ah, Hannah, you have never longed to live as I long to live if you do not know that another day is the most precious thing.
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.
I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead?
I prayed in silence that perhaps even now, the queen might have a son and might know joy like this, such a strange, unexpected joy- the happiness of caring for a child whose whole life was in my hands.
This is a woman whose belly is filled with pride. She has been eating nothing but her own ambition for nearly thirty years.
Any woman who dares to make her own destiny will always put herself in danger.
And now I want love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.
And now I wnt love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.
And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.
I wil not heat treason from my own daughterWhat will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at warWe are an army at war! This is your brother’s rightful throne that we are talking about
I was born to be your rival,’ she [Anne] said simply. ‘And you mine. We’re sisters, aren’t we?
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 realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.
All that that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.
If this is the will of God, it takes a strange and terrible shape. I did not know that the God of Battles was vile like this. I never knew that a saint could summon torment like this.
I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned.
She has a smile that grows slowly and then shines, like an angel’s smile.
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.
Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.