Nancy Bilyeau > Quotes

“When a burning is announced, the taverns off Smithfield Square order extra barrels of ale, but when the person to be executed is a woman and one of noble birth, the ale comes by the cartload.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown

“It wasn’t until the twelfth century that blue found a place on artists’ palettes, when they began to create it through grinding up certain stones. Every Madonna in a medieval painting wore blue robes, every stained glass window contained blue. It’s as if all men decided, at once, that blue was the color of…” I mull the right word… “the divine.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“The human heart is always drawn by love.' He hesitated again. It's you, he said. I am in love with you.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Chalice

“Ambrose Stanton has reached the far shore of Character, and the land is called Pomposity.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“We see blue everywhere in the natural world, in the sky and the sea and lakes, even the little bubbling streams, but what do we really see? It’s ephemeral. A reflection of something else. The seeming abundance is a trick. It doesn’t exist in a tangible form that we can adapt, make into pigment for you and all your fellow artists to use over the centuries.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“A faint acrid smell drifted in through the window, from the cannon fire. But through it all the walls of my prison cell never trembled. The walls of the Tower are the thickest in the land and they never, ever tremble”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown

“I’ve also heard it said that blue signifies divine contemplation.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“The crown of Christ Athelstan wore. If your blood be royal and your soul be pure, wear the crown and rule the land. For the worthy, there is victory. For the pretender, there is death.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown

“have gotten so much from reading A.S. Byatt, Katherine Neville, Elizabeth Kostova, and Ariana Franklin.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Chalice

“Norah Lofts,”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown

“These are harrowing times we live in, Joanna, times of discovery and learning but also the greatest turmoil of faith in a millennium.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry

“The United States was the home of Mark Twain and John Phillip Sousa, both of whom left me cold. It seemed to me that when an American possessed true talent, he or she decamped for Europe, like Henry James pretending to be English or Mary Cassatt refusing to budge from France.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, Dreamland: Scandals, dynasties and dangerous secrets

“Verum est notus per fides quod causa,” I cried out, desperate. The prioress stared at me, shocked. “Truth is known through faith and reason,” I said quickly, for the benefit of those not proficient in Latin. “We are a priory—we worship divine truth. Saint Thomas said faith and reason complement each other: they do not contradict. And he said that the intellect must seek out facts to support reason.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown

“Keppel discovered, quite by accident, that if he mixed potassium of a certain sort with sulfate it produced a beautiful dark blue that would hold on all sorts of surfaces. He sold the pigment to others, but kept his formula secret for years. Guarded it. Made his fortune that way. I think he was perhaps something of a scoundrel. Finally, another scientist was able to decipher his formula, not just for himself but for all, and there is the story of Prussian blue. The first color brought to us through science.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“The ancient followers of Pythagoras believed numbers were the basis of the universe. To them, seven is the deepest mystery, the number of supreme manifestation, and the vehicle of life containing body and spirit.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue

“the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Fugitive Colours

“As Helen walked toward Madison Avenue, she was struck by the golden circles emanating from the iron street lamps in front of the brownstones. Caught in the halos of light was a flurry of snowflakes. It must have just begun falling, for the sidewalk was merely damp, not white.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Ghost of Madison Avenue

“He bit his hip and studied me.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry

“scholar and alchemist named Johann Georg Faustus travels the country offering to conjure up demons, if not Lucifer himself.” I”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry

“What a curious experience, to learn the truth of one’s own character.”
― Nancy Bilyeau, The Blue