Quotes from Tracy Chevalier

Mientras contemplábamos el fósil, sentí por un momento que su espiral me absorbía y me hacía retroceder cada vez más lejos en el tiempo hasta que el pasado se perdía en su centro.

Los buscadores dedicamos horas y horas, día tras día, haga el tiempo que haga, con la cara quemada por el sol, el cabello enmarañado por el viento, los ojos siempre entornados y las manos agrietadas. Tenemos las botas llenas de barro y con manchas del agua de mar. Nuestra ropa acaba mugrienta al final de la jornada. A menudo no encontramos nada, pero somos pacientes y trabajadores y no nos desanimamos cuando regresamos a casa con las manos vacías.

Elle se sentait tellement déconcertée par la contradiction existant entre ce qu'elle pensait et ce qu'on espérait d'elle qu'elle était incapable de parler. Peut-être valait-il mieux qu'elle se taise, en attendant d'être plus sûre de ce qu'elle voulait dire. Ainsi ses paroles ne pourraient-elles être déformées et lui être renvoyées à la figure.

I have long noted that people tend to lead with one particular feature, a part of the face or body, my brother John, for instance, leads with his eyebrows, it is not just that they form prominent tufts above his eyes, but they are the part of his face that moves the most, tracing the course of his thoughts as his brow furrows and clears.

Mary Anning and I are hunting fossils on the beach, she her creatures, I my fish. Our eyes are fastened to the sand and rocks as we make our way along the shore at different paces, first one in front, then the other. Mary stops to split open a nodule and find what may be lodged within. I dig through clay, searching for something new and miraculous. We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.

It made me feel odd looking at that eye, like there was a world of curiosities I didn't know about: crocodiles with huge eyes and snakes with no heads and thunderbolts God threw down that turned to stone. Sometimes I got that hollowed-out feeling too when looking at a sky full of stars or into the deep water the few times I went out in a boat, and I didn't like it: it was as if the world were too strange for me ever to understand it.

Cuvier has suggested that animal species sometimes die out when they are no longer suited to survive in the world. The idea is troubling to people because it suggests that God does not have a hand in it, that He created animals and then sat back and let them die.

Though grafted at the same time, they had grown up to be different sizes; it always surprised James that the trees could turn out as varied as his children.

James found the talk by the wagons tiring after a while. He liked to listen, and he had thoughts of what he'd like to say about the weather, or the corn crop, or the road being macadamized, or the rascals in Congress. But he never quite had the courage to speak them aloud. By the time he had formed words to his liking, the conversation had moved on.

the grandeur false if you were not grand yourself.

Pregnant women often don't make the connection between their babies and sex. Neither do men. The two are so different, it is like magic.

The second he was gone the women began chattering like chickens at the sight of a fox.

I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot , and I collected fossil fish.

So we continued, arm in arm along the beach, talking until at last we had no more to say, like a storm that blows itself out, and our eyes dropped to the ground, where the curies were waiting for us to find them.

He was a man, and it was expected of him to achieve.

Stay here and do the packing and let the young one run all over California for you! Don't you always say the success of collecting is in the packing? You're the boss--take the most important role and stop moaning!

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.

I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed.

It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.

He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home