Chevalier Quotes & Sayings

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

Only soldiers and labouring men can appreciate how glorious it really is to lie late in bed in winter-time. When your life revolves around having to to be at work at seven o'clock in the morning you know everything about that ghastly lep up still half asleep and the rush to put your head under a tap of ice-cold water with the barbarous object of shocking yourself awake. — Maurice Chevalier

Say something worth the words. — Tracy Chevalier

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

An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public. — Maurice Chevalier

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

I prefer old age to the alternative. — Maurice Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

There followed a time when everything was dull. The things that had meant something lost importance, though they were still there, like bruises on the body that fade to hard lumps under the skin. — Tracy Chevalier

I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as 'The Royal Variety Show,' performing sketches opposite Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier. — Shirley Eaton

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

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

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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

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

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world. — Maurice Chevalier

I have favorite authors from a lifetime of reading, so there are some I'll automatically read every time they have a new novel. Included in them: Robert Goddard, Jeffery Deaver, Sophie Kinsella, Katherine Neville, Greg Isle, Laurie King, Lee Child, Lisa Tucker, Susan Howatch, Paul Auster. Barry Eisler, David Hewson, Tracy Chevalier. — M.J. Rose

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. — Tracy Chevalier

Like Tracy Chevalier, Burton is skilled at evoking place . . . Wonderful' Guardian — Jessie Burton

When you have done your best with what you know how to do best - and people everywhere look at you with a friendly smile. — Maurice Chevalier

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

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. — Tracy Chevalier

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition. — Maurice Chevalier

Perhaps thee will best understand what Abigail is like if I tell thee that when she quilts she prefers to stitch in the ditch, hiding her poor stitches in the seams between the blocks. — Tracy Chevalier

One does not grow old until he believes he has more to look back on than he has to look forward to. — Maurice Chevalier

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

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. — Tracy Chevalier

I've always privately suspected that Jesus is in favor of revolutionaries, seeing as how he was a bit of one himself. — G.N. Chevalier

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

The grandeur false if you were not grand yourself. — Tracy Chevalier

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

The French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience. — Maurice Chevalier

California is where you get to start over. — Tracy Chevalier

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment. — Tracy Chevalier

The uncertainty of events disturbs the purest enjoyments. — Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis

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

The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself. — Maurice Chevalier

The crime of loving is forgetting. — Maurice Chevalier

It is always the same: women bedeck themselves with jewels and furs, and men with wit and quotations. — Maurice Chevalier

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

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

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.. — Tracy Chevalier

Considering the alternative ... it's not too bad at all. — Maurice Chevalier

Since she had arrived for her stay at the artists' colony called Les Beaux Arts at the Chateau DeRoche, she'd noticed something different about the owner, Antoine Chevalier. And not just the way his eyes bore into hers, shooting shivers through her and making it difficult to breathe. His quiet nature, his preference for seclusion for days at a time, and his still, composed temperament belied an intensity within. Noir eyes that rarely blinked spoke of haunted depth and smoldering passion. — Lisa Carlisle

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

Spent much of my life in Lyme with my eyes fixed to the ground in search of fossils. Such hunting can limit a person's perspective. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

As I get older, I use less jewelry - necklace or earrings each morning, not both; my clothes are getting more basic - fewer colours and simpler cuts; and my make-up is stripped back to basics. — Tracy Chevalier

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

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. — Tracy Chevalier

Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it. — Maurice Chevalier

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

Reflection increases the vigor of the mind, as exercise does the strength of the body. — Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis

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

So many doors around here, I'm surprised your name isn't Monty Hall. — Randall Kenneth Drake

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. I patted my basket. I have my own fossils, — Tracy Chevalier

A tour of the Mexico City of Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo led by Barbara Kingsolver would be nice. And I certainly wouldn't turn down a tour of Johannes Vermeer's Delft led by Tracey Chevalier. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

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

I leaned agains the warm brick wall and gazed up. It was a bright, cloudless day, the sky a mocking blue. It was the kind of day when children ran up and down the streets and shouted, when couples walked out through the town gates, past the windmills and along the canals, when old women sat in the sun and closed their eyes. My father was probably sitting on the bench in front of the house, his face turned towards the warmth. Tomorrow night might be bitterly cold, but today it was spring. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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

It all boils down to instinct, good or bad. Artistic creation must be spontaneous. It comes from the heart; it has to pass through the brain; and still one needs the guts, and good old, indispensable technique, to bring it to the light of day. That, at least, is how I see the process, not that I have ever been able to pin it down very exactly in my own case. You hear a voice inside. You obey it, and produce whatever it told you to produce; and then you wait and see. And oh! The trouble you're in for. — Maurice Chevalier

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved. — Maurice Chevalier

It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily. — Tracy Chevalier

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me. — Tracy Chevalier

Only thieves and children run. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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

[On Bonnie Prince Charlie:] Oh, Charlie is my darling, / My darling, my darling; / Oh, Charlie is my darling, / The young Chevalier. — Carolina Nairne

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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 — Tracy Chevalier

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

I slowed my pace. Years of hauling water, wringing out clothes, scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, with no chance of beauty or color or light in my life, stretched before me like a landscape of flat land where, a long way off, the sea is visible but can never be reached. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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

He had decided to trust me. — Tracy Chevalier

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

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 — Tracy Chevalier

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 — Tracy Chevalier

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

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family.
Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same.
That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us.
How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you? — Tracy Chevalier

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

I feel like a bird who has been wounded with an arrow and now cannot fly. — Tracy Chevalier

It is because gold is rare that gilding has been invented, which, without having its solidity, has all its brilliancy. Thus, to replace the kindness we lack, we have devised politeness which has all its appearance. — Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis

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

Presently comfort came to him, and he thought the she had always given him of her strength though he had never quite realised it until now.
Glory had passed him by; fame too perhaps would not endure; it might well be that the incalculable goddess would decree ill fame as his due. Perhaps there might not be included in his epitah the one tribute to his knighthood the he knew he deserved "Ii fut toujours bon et loyal chevalier" (He was always good and loyal knight)
But whatever the shadowed years might bring, as long as life should last, he knew that he had here at his side one sure recompense and one abiding loyalty. — Anya Seton

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. — Tracy Chevalier

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. — Tracy Chevalier

Life itself was far messier and didn't end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. — Tracy Chevalier

Human nature is so weak that the honest men who have no religion make me fret with their perilous virtue, as rope-dancers with their dangerous equilibrium. — Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis

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. — Tracy Chevalier

not of this world, — Tracy Chevalier

If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England. — Tracy Chevalier

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

I knew I should believe him, as he taught at Oxford, but his answers did not feel complete. It was like having a meal and not getting quite enough to eat. — Tracy Chevalier