Sharon Kay Penman Quotes

I’ll admit that my garden now grows hope in lavish profusion, leaving little room for anything else. I suppose it has squeezed out more practical plants like caution and common sense. Still, though, hope does not flourish in every garden, and I feel thankful it has taken root in mine.

Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?

I inhale hope with every breath I take.

…she remembered watching a summer sunset from this very spot. Not so long ago; just a lifetime.

Poor Wales. So far from Heaven, so close to England.

...A scar signifies past pain, a wound that did not heal as it ought. But it testifies, too, to survival...(Here be Dragons)

For every wound, the ointment of time.

During the day, memories could be held at bay, but at night, dreams became the devil's own accomplices.

Why is it honesty when a man speaks his mind and madness when a woman does?

How fragile life was, how fleeting their days on earth, and how fickle was Death, claiming the young as often as the old, the healthy as often as the ailing, cruelly stealing away a baby's first breath, a mother's fading heartbeat.

There is nothing worse than an enemy with imagination.

Abigail Adams could become my favorite historical sleuth.

A cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed.

It was just like him, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him; she found herself believing in happy endings, too.

In time of war, the Devil makes more room in Hell.

I'd not want to answer for the lives of other men; not at seventeen, by God's Grace.

I'd just rather not reap a crop every year.

Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity

Men kill for many reasons, they steal but for one-greed.

Richard, might I ask you something? We've talked tonight of what you must do, of what you can do, of what you ought to do.But we've said nothing of what you want to do.Richard, do you want to be King?" At first, she thought he wasn't going to answer her. But as she studied his face, she saw he was turning her question over in his mind, seeking to answer it as honestly as he could. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes...I do.

I should like to freeze in time all those I do love, keep them somehow safe from the ravages of the passing years..."Rather like flowers pressed between the pages of a book!

When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wind cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.", Chapter 7