Jessie Burton Quotes

The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil.

The pastor looks at the money. It is money coming from the wife of a sodomite. It is money coming from a woman. It is the deep-lying root of evil. But it is a lot of money.

In suffering we find our truest selves.

Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught.

Neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all.

I feel younger than eighteen but burdened as a eighty-year-old.

I'm doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I'm concerned, I'll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I'll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I'm being selfish. It's perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss.

Love is best a phantom than reality, better in the chase than caught.

sometimes it's hard to love a person you know too well.

But how right is it to kill a man for something that is in his soul?

The air is hot, the atmosphere a bruise.

Writing is a leap of faith. But how wonderful that the person you're putting faith in is yourself.

A piece of art only succeeds when it's creator...possesses the belief that brings it into being

A lifetime isn't enough to know how a person will behave.

her bed by the stove, Cornelia's hand hovers over the remaining cabbage.

GOD - the importance of invisible over tangible

Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself, Marin. The bars on your cage are of your own making.

My life was a beanstalk and I was Jack, and the foliage was shooting up and up, abundant, impressive, at such speed that I could barely cling on.

Hard grind got us the glory,

I thought I deserved them, the sort of people you found only in novels. Quick

What was it like to see Lawrie smile? I can try: it was as if a healer had placed their hands upon my chest. My kneecaps porridge, jaw tingling, no hope to swallow.

I love. I love you. From back to front, I love you.

The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck - but Nella waits, until she can no longer difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away.

I'd prefer to rise in love , she thinks - lifting up to the clouds , not plunging to the earth. She pictures herself , weightless and adored , delirious in ecstasy.

of fear beats inside her. Who is this woman, watching from afar, who comments

The more they try to look holy the less I am convinced,

Spain's past is a cut of meat turning green on the butcher's slab. When the war ended, people were forbidden to look back and see the circling flies. Soon they found themselves unable to turn their heads, discovering that there was no language permitted for their pain. But the paintings at least, remain: Gernica, the works of Dali and Miro ... pg 339

You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling.

Not all of us receive the ends that we deserve. Many moments that change a life's course - a conversation with a stranger on a ship, for example - are pure luck. And yet no one writes you a letter, or chooses you as their confessor, without good reason. This is what she taught me: you have to be ready in order to be lucky. You have to put your pieces into play.

Then where is home, Johannes?" He looks at the maps on his wall. "I don't know," He says. "Where comfort is. And that is hard to find.

We're nothing more than prisoners to your desire.

She had told me that the approval of other people should never be my goal

You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still.

Do you have a body if there is no one there to touch it? I suppose you do, but sometimes it felt like I didn't. I was just a mind floating around the rooms.

She has always thought that kindness was an active thing. But the not doing of something, an act of restraint -- could that be kindness too?

But - love , Mother. Will I love him?

The girl wants love , ' Mrs Oortman cried theatrically to the peeling Assendelft walls. 'She wants the peaches and the cream.

Souls and purses, she thinks, these two are obsessed with souls and purses.

The ink was secret nectar, for Marin isn't married.

Perhaps this is fashionable conversation - combative and unsettling, passing for casual talk.

The bars on our cage are of our own making.

the browning Assendelft flatlands, this stranger

Like Tracy Chevalier, Burton is skilled at evoking place . . . Wonderful' Guardian

A Depressive?'
'Smiles in ballrooms, weeps in bedrooms. Ill in her head.' Olive tapped her temple. 'And here.' She touched her heart.

Love is better in the chase than caught - by Marin

She never married,' Pellicorne says. 'A waste.' For some of us, Nella thinks, it's a waste to be married.

Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder.

Then the birds flew away, their names turned to kisses, a silence to spell a new world.

...Is there ever such a thing as a whole story, or an artist's triumph, a right way to look through the glass? It all depends on where the light falls.

Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.

Nothing here is more fabulous than the truth

That may be. But to decide that I was never going to live as a proper woman was not your choice to make.' 'What do you mean a proper woman?' 'A proper woman marries - she has children -' 'Then what does that make me? Am I not a proper woman? Last time I looked I certainly was.

I see you are working your usual magic this evening." "Not magic, Madame. Just me." Agnes

Take care, take care. This city thrives! It's money gives you wings to soar. But it is a yoke on your shoulders and you would do well to take note of the bruise around your neck.

I felt nothing change in the room, except the shock of my voice alone and the peculiar euphoria one feels in the wake of applause, feeling at once cheapened and triumphant.

What was once, is no longer.

Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world.

Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out.

Everything Man sees he takes for a toy.
Thus is he always, forever a boy.

Love your children, for they are the seeds that will make this city bloom.

In many instances, politics was the cover for personal vendetta and family feud. Most of the right-wing terror was directed against those who had influenced the violence against the priests and the factory owners back in 1934 - union leaders, prominent anti-clericals, several Republican mayors. And yet - mechanics, butchers, doctors, builders, labourers, barbers - they too were 'taken for a walk', as the phrase came to be known. And it wasn't just men. Certain women who had become teachers under the Republic were removed, as were known anarchists' wives. None of it was legal, of course, but there seemed no means of stopping it, when hate and power were in play. Pg 348

You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care.

Above their rooftops Nature is doing her best to keep up, and the clouds in colors of saffron and apricot echo the spoils of the glorious republic. Nella

There are horizons through the brickwork, you wait and see.

She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one's parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn't lived it yet.

When you have truly come to know a person, Nella -- when you see beneath the sweeter gestures, the smiles -- when you see the rage and the pitiful fear which each of us hide -- then forgiveness is everything. We are all in desperate need of it.

Just because someone says something with passion, doesn't make it true.

All we can do if we're lucky is stich up the mistakes other people make.