Sharon Kay Penman Quotes

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

I inhale hope with every breath I take.

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.

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.

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

What followed was for him a very entertaining spectacle, with one of Edward's brothers seemingly intent upon the most subtle of seductions and the other barely able to force malmsey past the gorge rising in his throat.

She opened her mouth, clamped it shut again. This was new, this sudden favor shown Gloucester, had been brought back with him from Burgundy like some malevolent foreign pox.

Removing his helmet, Edward knelt by the stream called Swillgate, a name that effectively quenched any desire to drink from its depths.

Well, dearest, what would you tell a farmer who had an over-abundant harvest? To plant less, of course!"...
"I am not complaining about the frequency of the planting," she said. "I’d just rather not reap a crop every year.

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?

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?