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James Goldman Quotes

21 of the best book quotes from James Goldman
01
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“Your little brother Philip is the King of France now and he wants your wedding dowry back. I only took you for your dowry. You were seven. [...] The Vexin is a little county but it’s vital to me.”
James Goldman
author
The Lion in Winter
book
King Henry II
character
regret
political poker
arrangement
dowry
concepts
02
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“You hardly know me, Johnny, so I beg you to believe my reputation: I’m a constant soldier and a sometime poet and I will be King.”
03
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“My, what a greedy little trinity you are: king, king, king. Two of you must learn to live with disappointment.”
04
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“Henry: Did the Channel part for you? Eleanor: It went flat when I told it to. I didn’t think to ask for more. How dear of you to let me out of jail.”
05
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“Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”
06
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“I’ve snapped and plotted all my life. There’s no other way to be a king, alive and fifty all at the same time.”
07
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“Poor John-who says poor John? Don’t everybody sob at once. My God, if I went up in flames, there’s not a living soul who’d pee on me to put the fire out.”
08
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“You get Alais and you get the kingdom but I get the one thing I want most. If you’re king, England stays intact. I get that. It’s all yours now-the girl, the crown, the whole black bloody business. Isn’t that enough?”
09
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“When I married Eleanor, I thought: ‘You lucky man. The richest woman in the world. She owns the Aquitaine, the greatest province on the Continent - and beautiful as well.‘”
10
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“He’ll leave me if he has to; I know that.”
11
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“Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re all barbarians!”
12
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“It’s going to be a jungle of a day: if I start growling now. I’ll never last.”
13
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“Just you remember. Father loves me best.”
14
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“My position is - well frankly, Philip, it’s a tangle. Once I’m dead, who’s to be king? I could draw papers ‘til my scribes drop or the ink runs out, and once I died, unless I’ve left behind me three contented sons, my lands will split three ways in civil war.”
15
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“Eleanor: After all the years of love, the hair I’ve brushed and braided and the tears I’ve kissed away, do you think I could bring myself to hurt you? Alais: Eleanor, with both hands tied behind you.”
16
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“Alais: You saved them. You maneuvered it. Eleanor: Did I? Alais: They’re free because of you. They’ll kill him one day; you know that Eleanor: The next or the next.”
17
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“It’s a heavy thing, your nothing. When I write or send for you or speak or reach, your nothings come. Like stones.”
18
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“Geoffrey: Why, you chivalric fool-as if the way one fell down mattered. Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.”
19
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“You know what I am? I’m the family nothing. Geoffrey’s smart and Richard’s brave and I’m not anything.”
20
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“For these ten years you’ve lived with everything I’ve lost and loved another woman through it all. And I’m cruel. I could peel you like a pear and God would call it justice ...”
21
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“Well ‒ what shall we hang? The holly or each other?”

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