Antonia Fraser Quotations

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.

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.

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

I think mine is the fullest and most plausible account of what went on in Marie Antoinette's life.

After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.

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

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

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

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.

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

We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.

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

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

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

I don't like it, but this afternoon I've told myself I am going to go and get a dress.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

My mother was a politician in my formative years.

I enjoyed writing mysteries out of my imagination as a relief from all that research, and also because I could write them while traveling.

King Juan Carlos would be worthy of a full biography as a major player in his country's history. Alas, my Spanish is not good enough to offer myself!

Ninety-seven is my lucky number.

I'm glad I was never an heiress.

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.

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

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!

[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.

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

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

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

Why waste time instructing others when you could be reading the manuscripts yourself? The only exceptions are matters of foreign language.

As the seventh wife of Henry VIII I hope I would have managed to do the old monster in-my cooking comes to mind, as I am a hopeless cook.

One couldn't help thinking of Princess Diana when writing some passages, although I don't make a mention in the text, which would be anachronistic.