“Oh what a tragedy queen! You can smile when your heart is breaking because you are a woman!”
“I wish you were queen for all the days, and not just for one day in a pavilion by the river, my love”
“Went well!” she shrieked at him. “Pretty well! When I have lost the man I love, and my reputation as well? When I am all but ruined and shall be buried in the country until everyone has forgotten me? Pretty well! When my own father will not stand by me and when my mother swears she would rather see me dead? Are you mad, you fool? Are you mad? Or just dumb, blind, God-rotting stupid?” p.143
“I would not!” I exclaimed. “Surely to God you can all see that one thing, the one thing is that I always, always, do as I am told. You made my marriage at the age of twelve, madam. You ended it just two years later when I was only fourteen. I was in the king’s bed before my fifteenth birthday. Surely you can see that I have always done as I have been told by this family? If I could not fight for my own freedom I am hardly likely to fight for my sister’s!” p. 145
” I want a boy off you” p. 161
“There’s no reason to cry, Mary. Don’t cry, you’ll curdle the milk or something.” p. 162
“You just keep on being sweetly stupid, Mary. You do it beautifully.”
“I hate her,” I said simply. “I could happily watch her die of her ambition.”
“The world’s not changed that much yet. Men still rule.” p. 191
“He has a habit for Mary. A different thing. You’re a married man, Uncle, you should know that.” p. 240
“There are women that men marry and there are women that men don’t,” she pronounced. “And you are the sort of mistress that a man doesn’t bother to marry. Sons or no sons.” … “Yes,” I said. “I expect you’re right. But there is clearly a third sort and that is the woman that men neither marry nor take as their mistress. Women that go home alone for Christmas. And that seems to be you, my sister. Good day.” p. 242
“I would lose the place I had worked forever since I was twelve years old. I would be lasts year’s whore.” p. 259
“It was better that no one ever knew that I would have buried the Howards, every one of them, except George, in the great family vault and never thought that there was a loss.” p. 271
“Every day I give up my desires for this family,” he said in a savage undertone. “Every day I dance attendance on one sister or the other and play pander to the king. Every day I deny my own desire, my own passion, I deny my own soul! I make my life a secret to my self. Now you come.” p. 268
“Look at Marry! Didn’t we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don’t whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone.” p. 295
“I shan’t forget this, Anne. On your deathbed I’ll remind you that you took my son because you were afraid that you could not make one of your own.” p. 313
“Because you’re older every day,” I said spitefully. “And so is the king. Who knows that you can make a child at all? I was so fertile with him that I had two children from him on after another, and one the most beautiful boy that God ever put on this earth. You’ll never have a boy like my Henry, Anne. You know in your very bones that you’ll never have a boy to match him. All you can do is steal my son because you know you’ll never have your own.” p. 313
“We might either of us be Queen of England and yet w’ll always be nothing to our family.” p. 310
“Yes,” I said, brutally frank. “He adored it; it gave him as great a pleasure as anything else. And you can look as if you cannot bear the thought of it, you can set yourself up as high as you like; but if you have to hold him with whore’s tricks then you had better learn some new whore’s tricks and do them well.” p. 327
“Henry Percy must have felt a harsh joy to send to Anne the man who had separated them, now sick with exhaustion and despair It was no fault of Henry Percy’s that Wolsey escaped them all by dying on the road and the only satisfaction that Anne could take was that it was the boy she had loved who told the man that had parted them that her vengeance had come at last.” p. 349
“If you had not been tempted you would not have fallen. If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal. Go away, Lady Carey, you are no better than your sister who pursues her own ends like a weasel and never glances to one side of the other. Nothing will stop the Boleyns gaining what they want, I know that. Sometimes I think she will stop at nothing, even my death, to do it. And I know that you will help her, however much you love me, however much I loved you when you were my little maid- you will be behind her every step of her way.” p. 353
“I never thought it would end like this,” she said in a small voice. “I never thought he would be able to leave me with out saying good-bye.” p. 371
“She’s a Boleyn and a Howard,” I said frankly. “Underneath the great name, we are all bitches on heat.” p. 388
“Now go and fine your sister an lie your head off. Open those beautiful eyes of yours and tell lies for us.” p. 395
“For you are a fool and i am in love with a fool and the more fool me. I will not listen to you but you will listen to every spiteful worm that would spit poison in your ear!” p. 397
“You would be a nobody too, if you married me,” he said. “There’s a great comfort in it. Your sister is set to be queen. D’you think she will be happier than you?” p. 403
“I never had that,” I said. The only thing I’ve ever wanted from childhood was not to be overlooked.” p. 410
“You’ll be overlooked now for the rest of your life. We’ll both be as nothing. Anything I achieve will be seen to her gift. And you’ll never match her. She’s the only Boleyn anyone will ever know of or remember. You’ll be a nobody forever.” p. 410
“You know, there might be some joy in being a nobody.” p. 411
“You don’t leave the king,” I said simply. “He leaves you.” p. 428
“I can’t promise on my honour, for I have now honour,” I said bleakly. “I was married to one man and I cuckolded him with the king. I went back to him and he died, before I had a chance to tell him that i might love him. And now when I find a man that could love heart and soul, you ask me to promise on my honour not to see him – and I do so promise. on my honour. There is no honour left in us three Boleyns at all.” p. 437
“Then you should be silent and try thinking before you speak for once,” she snapped.” p. 426
“This life would corrupt a saint, never mid a young man.” p. 465
“This will be your undoing,” I whispered. “Oh probably,” he said carelessly. “But Anne will save me. Anne and my nephew the king.” p. 472
“After the baby is born you can go to hell if you like,” she said levelly. p. 474
“I had found a man I loved; and married for love. I would never suggest that this was a mistake.” p. 518
“I shall sleep,” she whispered. “And I wish to God that I could never wake up.” p. 547
“If you go on flirting with the king with those sickly little smiles, one of us Boleyns is going to scratch your eyes out.” p. 582
“I turned for home and found that my face was wet with tears. I had not thought the lose George. I had never thought that Anne and I would have to live our lives without George.” p. 657
Me, Myself and I. 