“I am so tired; all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep all the day, from dawn until twilight that every evening comes a little earlier and a little more drearily. In the daytime, all I can think about is sleeping. But in the night I do is try to stay awake.”

“Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.”

“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.”

“I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel and started to walk away.”

“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”

“And now I wnt love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.”

“And now I want love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.”

“You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition”

“Men command the world that they know . Everything that men know they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who took for the laws that govern the world, and then want to own them and keep them secret. Everything they discover,they hug to themselves: they shape knowledge into their own selfish image. What is left to us women but the realms of the unknown?”

“I have given my word that only death will take me from you.”

“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.”