Quotes from Tracy Chevalier

Sólo los ladrones y los niños corren.

It is perhaps difficult to understand if you have not had children yourself. The biological imperative of the parent is to protect the child, and when that is impossible it feels like a failure, whatever the circumstances. It is a complicated feeling to live with for the rest of your life.

Everything engravers do gets printed opposite. The engraver has to be able to see it both ways.

Yaln?zca h?rs?zlar ve çocuklar koÅŸar.

It was a funny thing: once you tell your story to others it becomes more like fiction and less like truth. A layer of performance is added to it, removing you further from the real thing.

Life was often simply the repetition of the same movements in a different order, depending on the day and the place.

Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach.

I do not respect you, and I will never let you have any of my fossil fish

I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I heard voices outside our front door – a woman's, bright as polished brass, and a man's, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.

Women always studied other women, and did so far more critically than men ever did. Men didn't notice the run in their stocking, the lipstick on their teeth, the dated, outgrown haircut, the skirt that pulled unflattering across the hips, the paste earrings that were a touch too gaudy. Violet registered every flaw and knew every flaw that was being noted about her.

not of this world

There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting,' he explained as he worked, 'but it is not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things – tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids – are they not celebrating God's creation as well?

It's simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God's early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes." I raised my eyebrows. "Do you mean God rejected it?" "I mean God wanted a better version—the crocodile we know now—and replaced it.

It is not easy to let someone go, even when they have said unforgivable things to you.

married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mold, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable. I patted my basket. "I have my own fossils

You know what they say: trouble always comes in threes.

Dee understood now that real couples didn't have to ask each other to go together: they already were together.

The beauty of this girl standing behind him was not just physical, though. It seemed to O that she was lit from within by something most kids either did not have or hid deep inside: soul. He thought no one could ever hate her, and that was rare in this world. She was there to make things better.

She was beautiful?not a word anyone usually used to describe an eleven-year-old girl. Cute was more common, or pretty. Beautiful dug deeper than a girl that age could normally stand up to. But Dee was beautiful.

had come to London for a reason, not to enjoy anonymity and solitude whilst eyeing the wider horizon.

Compliments in America can take an almost aggressive form, as if the speaker needs to defend her own shortcomings rather that simply to rejoice in another's ability.

She attributed her own fine sewing to the prolonged periods of silence at Meeting; these had made her thoughts level and her hand steady, which was reflected in her even stitching.

Our lives are becoming more convenient but less tangible, and bookshops are the victims of that choice.

When a women wants a cup of tea, usually she has to make it for herself, and forthe others around her. There is no better taste than a cup of tea someone has made for you.