Antonia Fraser Quotes

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#3. People cannot help their predilections, although they may conceal them.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#6. [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.

Antonia Fraser

#7. very last answer which Paulet and Buckhurst were prepared to

Antonia Fraser

#8. It is a fact that, being a quick reader, apart from enabling a person to study good books such as Macaulay and Gibbon, enables a person to read a lot of bad books as well.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#14. 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.

Antonia Fraser

#15. She saw that supreme dignity - and love - lay in tolerance.

Antonia Fraser

#16. The deep division that exists in the human race, regardless of any other more obvious distinction, between those for whom books are an obsession, and those who are prepared, good-humouredly enough, to tolerate their existence.

Antonia Fraser

#17. I'm glad I was never an heiress.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#21. 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.

Antonia Fraser

#22. Ninety-seven is my lucky number.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#25. Darnley, who, like Banquo's ghost, seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive.

Antonia Fraser

#26. 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.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#29. It lies in humanity's infinite capacity for self-deception where some perceived (and in this case long-desired) advantage is at stake

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#31. My mother was a politician in my formative years.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#36. Mignon' said the King, 'soon you are going to be a great king'. But he also told Anjou, in a memorable phrase
'Try to remain at peace with your neighbors: I have loved war too much ...

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#39. 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!

Antonia Fraser

#40. sunken to that of an old woman in the harsh disguise

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

#42. 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.

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser

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

Antonia Fraser