Antonia Fraser Quotes

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

I'm glad I was never an heiress.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

My mother was a politician in my formative years.

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all. marie antoinette

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

Of course there's no such thing as a totally objective person, except Almighty God, if she exists.

Ninety-seven is my lucky number.

People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.

I hate the only one of my book jackets when I was made up professionally, my hair made into a smooth bell.

I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

If I write that it was a cold day, you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.

Her imperturbable self-confidence (Duchesse de Maine) caused Madame de Stael to write that the Duchesse believed in herself the same way she believed in God, without explanation or discussion.

King Charles II liked women's company and well as making love to them.

I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

As the Dauphine stepped out of her carriage on to the ceremonial carpet that had been laid down, it was the Duc de Choiseul who was given the privilege of the first salute. Presented with the Duc by Prince Starhemberg, Marie Antoinette exclaimed: 'I shall never forget that you are responsible for my happiness!

Mary Queen of Scots was my first love, and that is always something special.

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.

My mother, who was quite sharp when I was young, became utterly mild.

I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery, but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.