Antonia Fraser Quotes (34 Quotes)

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

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

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

My mother was a politician in my formative years.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ninety-seven is my lucky number.

I'm glad I was never an heiress.

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

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

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

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