“I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, a...”

“You know I'm not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king's servant.”

“The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad...”

“Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.”

“The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them.”

“Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief wit...”

“Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife?”

“Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king wil...”

“Is a woman bound to wifely obedience, when the result will be to turn her out of the estate of wife?”

“The more wit the less courage.”

“Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.”

“Wit beyond measure is mans greatest treasure.”