Tracy Chevalier > Quotes

“I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Falling Angels

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

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Falling Angels

“He spoke her name as though he held cinnamon in his mouth.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Say something worth the words.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“I did not mind the cold so much when he was there.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“I have a bed and enough to eat and kind people about me. God is still with me. For these things I am grateful and have no reason to complain”
― Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway

“So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!”
― Tracy Chevalier

“He had decided to trust me.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“I didn't move. I've learned from years of experience that dogs and falcons and ladies come back to you if you stay where you are.”
― Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“What do you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?'
'I believe. . . I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands --- or hundreds of thousands of years --- to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.'
'And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?'
'They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn't it?”
― Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures

“At first I could not meet his eyes. When I did it was like sitting close to a fire that suddenly blazes up.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway

“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.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“There was something different about her, though I could not say exactly what it was. It was as if she were more certain. If someone were sketching her they would use clear, strong lines, whereas before they might have used faint marks and more shading. She was like a fossil that’s been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.”
― Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures

“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?”
― Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Only thieves and children run.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“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”
― Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures