Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eye, which makes her the center of attention.
En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.
D'you think I can't write this and get someone-a drunk married to a fool -to swear to it? Do you think I can't sey up as historian? As storyteller? D'you think I can't write a history which years from...
But to tell you the truth, it is the same for me. I am as envious of her as she is of me. But I have seen her rise and rise.
But don’t run too fast, my sister warned. Remember he has to catch you.
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.
Because I write women’s history I rarely have the luxury of a full and fair biography to study. Until about 1960 there were very few histories written about women at all, and often I am faced with a b...
Anne shook her head. I’ll not be safe until she is dead, she said. Just as she will not be safe until I am dead. It is not just a matter now of a man or a throne, it is as if I am her shadow and she i...
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.
All the people speak of a hero like a ghost or a sleeping saint, or a pretender. It would almost make you believe that there is an heir of York hidden out in the hills, a king waiting for the call to...
See her hesitating at the threshold as if she cannot bear to leave him, and I give her a smile, and I stretch out my hand and rest it lightly on her son’s shoulder, a gentle proprietorial touch. Good...
All that I learn just teaches me that I know nothing.
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. T...
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...
You don’t get to be a favorite at a tyrant’s court without beheading your principles every day.
When you raise a child and he becomes a man, you start to think that he is safe,
What was his coward's way out? when the doors of the church open, and I have to walk forwards and take the hand of my new husband, and stand before a priest and swear to be a wife. I feel his big hand...
What if I don’t want an unwilling bridegroom, a pretender to the crown, who won his throne through disloyalty and betrayal? What if I tell you that my heart is in an unmarked grave somewhere in Leices...
Though the leaves fall from the trees like brown tears, for him everything must be as green as fresh grass, as white as May blossom, as if to convince us all that the seasons are upside down and we ar...
The more that I learn, the more sure I am that I have very much to learn...