Love isn’t making others into the people we imagine they should be. It’s about letting people be themselves.

For all my love of words, I am afraid to use them at all.

I can't speak. There are too many negatives. Too many questions...And all the things these hard times have taken from me. All the things I've had to give up.Except, perhaps, my dreams.

Shut up!' I shouted. 'Why can you not see that my desire to be rid of you has nothing to do with feistiness or women's problems or fear of being caught, but has everything to do with you!

Blaming the woman for the loss of a child is like blaming the soldier for the loss of his life in battle.

Nobody can go back to how it was. The dust bowl dried us all up bitter as seeds and spat us out all over the land and none of us yet has taken root.

Love isn't making others into the people we imagine they should be. It's about letting people be themselves

Hand in hand, we climb the processional stair, rising in the celebratory uproar of a capricious court. As we enter the palace, we are blinded by the ascent from sunshine into darkness.

I rise early that morning and dress in green and brown, my skirst the same colour as the forest floor. I include a cap copied from one of the duchess's, but set farther back from my face. She may be a bitch, but she does have style.

The walls loom, grey as the rain outside. LIke the sky of England itself. Everything seems colourless and humbled, despite the layers of velvets and tapestries, the peacock plumage of courtiers and ladies. Greenwich Palace feels like my father's disappointment made tangible.