Natasha Solomons > Quotes

“It is the storyteller's prerogative to try to write, every now and then, the ending she might wish for. Even if it exists only on the white page.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Novel in the Viola

“I took a deep breath and filled my lungs with summer.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Novel in the Viola

“Photographs are so strange; they are always in the present tense, everyone captured in a moment that will never come again.”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“The map of a face expresses things from which geography might learn.
patrick Hayman, A Painter's Notes 1959”
― Natasha Solomons, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

“They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or cliched or anything other than absolutely tender and true.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Novel in the Viola

“He liked the English and their peculiarities. He liked their stoicism under pressure; on the wall in his factory he kept a copy of a war poster emblazoned with the Crown of King George and underneath the words “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
― Natasha Solomons, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

“A wise man can make a mistake, but only a fool fails to correct it.”
― Natasha Solomons, House of Gold

“His skin felt so war, and I wondered that in all her lectures upon proper behaviour, Anna had failed to mention that behaving improperly was much more fun.”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“May there be just sufficient clouds in one’s life to make a spectacular sunset.”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“I remember that Sunday with absolute clarity - it was one of those perfect June mornings that make one certain Eden was a summer's day in southern England.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Novel in the Viola

“I lay in his arms and I understood. I am two women and I love two men. Elise will always love Kit and Alice loves Daniel. This was not the life or the love I had expected but it was love all the same.”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark,’ replies Michelangelo.”
― Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa

“Jack thought of his wife, filled with nothing but sorrow, wandering the earth remembering the dead and happier times.”
― Natasha Solomons

“Item 151: This last item supersedes all previous list items. If you see a Dorset woolly-pig, you are a true Dorset man. And as any noggerhead or ninny wally knows, the Dorset man is the best of all Englishman”
― natasha solomons

“Knowledge is a currency as powerful as sterling.”
― Natasha Solomons, House of Gold

“It was much better to share it with him; if he was a madman then at least they were crazy together.”
― Natasha Solomons, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

“All of you want to shine neon lights into the dark places. Why do all mysteries need to be solved? There is a pleasure in uncertainty.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

“God was in the pictures. I looked and looked and never mind how closely I studied them, I couldn’t see God lurking among the trees or peeking out from behind a pillar. I loved the pictures for themselves. The truth is, I don’t need God any more, but I do need art.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

“realise how differently Leonardo and Michelangelo see the world. How differently they want us, the viewer, to perceive our world. I imagine that sketch of the David in marble, massive and bold and magnificent, a feat of daring from the prodigious Michelangelo. His vision of art isn’t like Leonardo’s. Il Gigante is aggressive and brash, swaggering with his slingshot. Nothing is hidden. A glorious exterior displayed for all to admire. Leonardo is opposite. He always instructs Cecco and Tommaso to tell stories with their pictures but to leave something as a mystery, something hidden. It is more enticing, more delightful, when a secret is concealed. The viewer must bring part of themselves to the painting.”
― Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa

“up”
― Natasha Solomons, The Song Collector

“Picasso was a genius, but, unlike Leonardo, he seemed to take macabre pleasure in women’s pain. He needed to inflict torment upon us in order to create his art. I was filled with repugnance. Beside Pablo, Michelangelo seemed a gentle, agreeable fellow.”
― Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa

“They hasten after him. Wealth cannot insulate a man from unhappiness. The ill-fated man grieving for his beloved wife and now enraptured and enchanted by a painting. I study Leonardo through the darkness. It takes powers of divine genius to make a painting of such beauty that a man loves it as though it were a real woman. Yet, in me, he has created something else entirely.”
― Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa

“[My mother] always said that a man with excellent taste in literature was a man to be trusted.”
― Natasha Solomons

“Pablo had woken me up to colour and noise again, and now I had someone to talk to, I couldn’t bear to be abandoned to silence. He understood his power over me and gloried in it. He was the same with me as with all his women – witty, charming and diabolical. I was smitten.”
― Natasha Solomons, I, Mona Lisa

“He loved us all, then let us fall from his fingers, desiccated as the rose petals on the flowers he made.”
― Natasha Solomons, Fair Rosaline

“Men or women who think they can control fortune as if she’s a housewife are the fools. She’ll spin and spin whatever we do.”
― Natasha Solomons, Fair Rosaline

“thousand miles from Vienna, I could see”
― Natasha Solomons, The House at Tyneford

“Objects divorced from their stories are downgraded to mere knick- knacks.”
― Natasha Solomons, The Song of Hartgrove Hall