Gill Paul > Quotes

“You Jump, I jump, remember

-Kate Winslet Titanic”
― Gill Paul, Titanic Love Stories: The True Stories of 13 Honeymoon Couples Who Sailed on the Titanic

“London and New York, and the hire car’s Sat Nav told her she had driven 252 miles since leaving the airport. A whole ocean and half a state lay between her and Tom. She should have been upset but instead she felt numb. Back in the UK it was four-thirty on a Sunday afternoon and she wondered what Tom was doing, then grimaced as she pictured him pottering around the house in his jogging bottoms and t-shirt. He would no doubt have called her closest friends, all innocence, asking if they knew where she was. How long would it take him to work out she had flown to America to look for the lakeside cabin she’d inherited from her great-”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“To feel that another human being truly understood the core of you and loved what they saw, while you felt the same about them – that was the best feeling of all. In”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“I think there are patterns in human behaviour,' he said, 'but not in fate.”
― Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter

“supporting each other as they succumbed to the ailments and indignities of old age and”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“The ideas behind Communism are sound, but the wrong people got into power.”
― Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter

“The girls were always trying to rope me in to their games, dressing me in costumes and making me perform in their plays. You have no idea how character-forming it is for a young boy to be forced to wear a wig and gown and have his cheeks rouged!”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“never be able to put into words how they really felt?”
― Gill Paul, Women & Children First

“After that she changed the subject: Did”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“Every day since I met you I have loved you a thousand times more...
-Napoleon the Great”
― Gill Paul, Royal Love Stories: The tales behind the real-life romances of Europe's kings and queens

“Everyday since I have met you I have loved you a thousand times more.
(Napolean Bonaparte)”
― Gill Paul, Royal Love Stories: The tales behind the real-life romances of Europe's kings and queens

“Each expressed whatever was on his or her mind at the moment and it flowed back and forth in a fast-moving current of companionship.”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.
-Wallace Simpson”
― gill paul, Royal Love Stories: The tales behind the real-life romances of Europe's kings and queens

“This was one of the extraordinary things about a close relationship: it was possible for your partner to know you better than you knew yourself.”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“It's human nature to try to look for patterns in life,' Val said, 'but I suppose most things are random.”
― Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter

“It’s as if something else takes over when I sing—a divine energy, a creative force, call it what you will—and it fills me from top to toe . . .”
― Gill Paul, Jackie and Maria: A Novel of Jackie Kennedy & Maria Callas

“You look like a startled deer emerging from a wood and seeing its first ever human being,” he said. Those were his first words to her.”
― Gill Paul, Jackie and Maria: A Novel of Jackie Kennedy & Maria Callas

“intelligent. I cannot stop to write more now but will try to find a moment soon. Your very own, Malama. He sealed the note and hurried to the postal clerk’s tent to send it, still feeling discomfited. How could Tatiana not see through such a ruffian? Was she so lacking in judgement? He pondered the question as he lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, and it came to him that her very limited exposure to the outside world must mean she did not have well-tuned instincts about human nature. She was a good creature who saw only good in everyone she met. It would be his role gently to teach her more of the world. As soon as he realised this, he regretted the pompous tone of his note and hoped it would not upset her or even change her opinion of him. He lay awake long into the night worrying and as soon as the camp awoke the following morning he rushed to the postal tent to retrieve his letter, only to find it had”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“centurions”
― Gill Paul, The Affair

“rescued her the rest of her family might still be alive, but”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“away.”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“swathed from head to toe in furs. ‘For God’s sake, I ask”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“mine”
― Gill Paul, A Beautiful Rival

“I don’t like the Russian people anymore. This regime brings out the worst in everyone. But I agree, it’s better not to speak up or you could find yourself targeted next.”
― Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter

“there was no question in her mind that Raisa was an NKVD informer. She was exactly the type they would target because she would love the self-importance.”
― Gill Paul, The Lost Daughter

“glamorous”
― Gill Paul, Jackie and Maria: A Novel of Jackie Kennedy & Maria Callas

“Alexandra and Nicholas in the centre and little Alexei in front. 21st November 1914. Had tea at home with Mama [we] four, and Malama sweetheart was [here]. [Was] awfully glad to see him. And we said goodbye as he is going to the front soon. If Dmitri and Tatiana corresponded while he was at the front, the letters have not survived. A year and a half later, once he had returned to Tsarskoe Selo, Alexandra wrote of him to Tsar Nicholas: ‘He had matured, though still a lovely boy. I have to admit, he would make an excellent son-in-law. Why are foreign princes not like him?’ Had it not been for the Revolution, there is a good chance Malama and Tatiana could have married: Malama’s family were part of Russia’s old nobility and there were precedents because Nicholas’s sister Olga had married an army officer in 1916. Tatiana also had an admirer called Volodya, but there is no doubt Malama was her favourite from the many times she mentions him in her diaries and from the”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“The air filled with smoke, making it difficult to see, and the guards panicked. They began stabbing viciously with bayonets to finish off their victims, turning the scene into a bloodbath. Some of the girls were murmuring prayers, others screaming. Bullet after bullet was pumped into little Alexei. Tatiana was shot in the back of the head as she and Olga huddled in a corner, her brain tissue spattering Olga’s face.”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“to leave Tobolsk”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife

“a male character ponders why his relationship is so different twenty years down the line; the dynamic has changed, the power base has shifted. And he realises that as his own position in life has changed, it has skewed the way he views his partner.”
― Gill Paul, The Secret Wife