Stephanie Cowell > Quotes

“Sometimes he dreamt he held her; that he would turn in bed and she would be there. But she was gone and he was old. Nearly seventy. Only cool paint met his fingers. “Ma très chère . . .” Darkness started to fall, dimming the paintings. He felt the crumpled letter in his pocket. “I loved you so,” he said. “I never would have had it turn out as it did. You were with all of us when we began, you gave us courage. These gardens at Giverny are for you but I’m old and you’re forever young and will never see them. . . .”
― Stephanie Cowell, Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet

“Dull late-afternoon light glittered on the hanging copper pots in the kitchen where the old painter sat with his wine, smoking cigarette, a letter angrily crumpled on the table in front of him.”
― Stephanie Cowell, Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet

“Don’t work bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere. —CAMILLE PISSARRO”
― Stephanie Cowell, Claude & Camille: A Novel

“And supposing the preachers in the church he had gone to with his uncle were right: one slip and you sizzle.”
― Stephanie Cowell, The Boy in the Rain

“you married a woman and did moist, clumsy things with her in bed.”
― Stephanie Cowell, The Boy in the Rain

“The problem with having loved, however briefly, he thought reflectively, is that you can’t ever get back to yourself just as you were before. It changes you.”
― Stephanie Cowell, Claude & Camille: A Novel