Tracy Chevalier Quotes

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

Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning's life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader's patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in.

I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.

Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down.

Because thee remains there, it is easier for me to go, for thee can be the shore I look back on, the star that remains fixed."
from "The Last Runaway

Whatever's happened to you during the day, as long as you got a nice pillowcase for your head at night, you'll be all right. You got yourself a place to lay your head, Honor Haymaker. Things are lookin' up.

Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to London.

They do not practise the art of conversation in quite the way the English do, but are straightforward to the point of bluntness.

That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.

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

I have always admired most those who lead with their eyes, like Mary Anning, for they seem more aware of the world and its workings.

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.

It's those little daily incidents of life that are dramatic, and if you put a frame around it , suddenly they become much bigger and much more important than you ever imagined.

Back home there was a slot in which my life was meant to fit. Then it was taken away and it felt as if there was no place for me. I thought it better to go and start somewhere new. So I thought.' 'That's a very American notion, leaving problems behind and movin' on', Belle said. 'If you thought that, maybe you're not so English after all (...)

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

My mommy told me
If I was goody
That she would buy me
A rubber dolly

My sister told her
I kissed a soldier
Now she won't buy me
That rubber dolly

Now I am dead
And in my grave
And there beside me
A rubber dolly

Funny, I didn't think much about apples fore we came to the Black Swamp. when I was growin up we had an orchard like everybody else but I didn't pay it no attention cept when the blossom was out in May. Then Id go and lie there smellin some sweet perfume and listenin to the bees hum so happy cause they had flowers to play with. That was where James and I lay our first time together. I shouldve known then he wasnt for me. He was so busy inspectin my familys trees and askin how old each was - like I would know - and what the fruit was like (Juicy like me, I said) that finally I had to unbutton my dress myself. That shut him up a while.

You know I don't listen to market gossip," she began,
"but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter's name is mentioned.

I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors' families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining.

There is no need to fear," he said, "for you are here with me.

The grandeur false if you were not grand yourself.

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

It turned out plant collecting was a solitary occupation. In the past Robert had enjoyed being alone, or so he thought. Actually he had rarely been alone for long: working in hotels, in stables, on ranches and farms, and as a miner, he had always been around others. Now, out in the woods or up in the hills or out on the flat central plain, he could go for days without speaking to anyone. His throat seemed to close up and he had to keep clearing it, singing songs aloud or reciting the Latin names of plants, just to check that he still had a voice. 'Araucaria imbricata. Sequoia sempervirens. Pinus lambertiana. Abies magnifica'. He was surprised at how much he missed people..

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

I find that when I come out of the library I'm in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life.
[Woman's Day magazine, March 12, 2002]

I did not sleep well that night. I was not used to having the power to affect someone's life so and did not easily carry its weight, as a man might have done.

A firefly landed on Honor's sleeve and began walking up her shoulder, its tail still blinking. As she craned her neck to look down at it, Jack chuckled. "Don't be scared. It's just a lightning bug." He placed his finger in its path. Honor tried not to think about the pressure of his touch. When the firefly crawled onto his finger, he lifted it up and let it fly off, signaling its escape route with sparks of light.

Everybody asks the same questions
but they don't know that they ask the same questions.

For myself, it took only the early discovery of a golden ammonite, glittering on the beach between Lyme and Charmouth, for me to succumb to the seductive thrill of finding unexpected treasure.

Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.

At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up.

This is not your land," William Lobb said.
"Oh, it is, it is. I got the papers. I can show you, back at the camp."
"This is Indian land, if it's anyone's." William Lobb spoke as if he hadn't heard Billie Lapham. "Those Miwoks encamped just south of here - they've been here longer than you. It's theirs, or it's God's land - take your pick.

I did not mind the cold so much when he was there.

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.

This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favored, by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she'd met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen's books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier and didn't end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.

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!

in the clear brown were little flecks of black like pieces of bark

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.

I have spent my life waiting for something to happen,' she said. 'And I have come to understand that nothing will. Or it already has, and I blinked during that moment and it's gone. I don't know which is worse - to have missed it or to know there is nothing to miss.

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

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

I never said I didn't want to marry. It just didn't happen-Iam not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own.

It is less distracting in the silence," she said. "Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation.

He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I.

Have noticed that people do not change which feature they lead with, any more than they change in character.

Yes, my boy; yes, my girl. The tension between contraries is what makes us ourselves. We have not just one, but the other too, mixing and clashing and sparking inside us. Not just light, but dark. Not just peace, but at war. Not just innocent, but experienced.

Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about 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.

He stood there at the edge of the orchard looking like he would never be whole again.

But dying was no drama. Dying was cold and hard and painful, and dull. It went on too long. I was exhausted and growing bored with it. Now I had too much time to think about whether I was going to die from the tide

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

Say something worth the words.

The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

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.

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

We do not need such things to help us to see God," I countered. "We have His Word, and that is
enough.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

of all the cities he had been to - Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Salt Lake City - San Francisco was by far the worst.

Truly to appreciate what fossils are requires a leap of imagination he was not capable of making.

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?" I

He was a collector rather than a hunter, buying his knowledge rather than seeking it with his own eyes and hands. I

I felt as if my parents had pushed me into the street, that a deal had been made and I was being passed into the hands of a man. At least he is a good man, I thought, even if his hands are not as clean as they could be.

Younger women tend to be busier, wearing more layers and more make-up. I don't know if it's because older women are more confident, or just that we don't care any more. But that pared-down approach is the same with the sentences I write; I take out adjectives and adverbs and keep the description to a minimum.

Margaret grasped on to the magic of novels because they held out hope that Mary - and she herself - might yet have a chance at marriage. While my own experience of life was limited, I knew such a thing would not happen. It hurt, but the truth often does.

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.

He could not tell all of the California pines apart, the gray pine from the coulter, the bushop from the knobcone and the Monterey.

God placed the fossils there when He created the rocks, to test our faith, he responded at last. As He is clearly testing yours Miss Philpot.
It is my faith in you that is being tested, I thought.

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.

My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.

But John Chapman told us he didnt eat meat cause he couldnt stand for somethin livin to be killed jest to keep him alive.

People had gone west leaving behind all sorts of trouble; what they found in California was the space and freedom to create new trouble.

My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.

Pieter would be pleased with the rest of the coins, the debt now settled. I would not have cost him anything. A maid came free.

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

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.

While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside.

Nance is funny that way. She likes women her own size--like your sister. She knows where she is with a woman like Martha. Whereas Molly--she's so--well, so full of life, she makes Nance feel even sicker.

He spoke her name as though he held cinnamon in his mouth.

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.

We had not meant our choice to cut us off from our past, but it did. We had only the present and the future to think of in Lyme.

Lick your lips, Griet."
I licked my lips.
"Leave your mouth open."
I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

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Although we kept the door ajar so that we could hear, we could not see beyond the gentlemen standing in front of the door in the crowded room. I felt trapped behind a wall of men that separated me from the main event.

not of this world,