Tracy Chevalier Quotes (15 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Falling Angels

Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier: 15 quotes0 likes

Famous Tracy Chevalier Quotes

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

Tracy Chevalier

“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”

Tracy Chevalier book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Say something worth the words.”

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

Source: Girl With A Pearl Earring

“Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.”

Tracy Chevalier book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

“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

Tracy Chevalier Quotes

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

Tracy Chevalier

“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 book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

“Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.”

Tracy Chevalier book Falling Angels

Source: Falling Angels

“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 book Remarkable Creatures

Source: Remarkable Creatures

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”

Tracy Chevalier book Girl with a Pearl Earring

Source: Girl with a Pearl Earring

“I live with them for a long time in my head. When I first start writing about a character, I don’t know them that well. It’s through the process of writing of putting them in scenes, and contemplating them—when I’ve spent more time with them—that they take on more flesh. When I start writing, I have a lot of characters that I’m not sure what their place in the novel will be…And some characters recede as I put more flesh on them. I think I don’t really need them; they’re not giving me anything. Or they’re there for a particular effect, and that’s it.”

Tracy Chevalier

On how she formulates her characters in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-tracy-chevalier/ in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23)

“Usually, I take great pleasure in finding a notebook that’s going to match the subject matter. And this time, for some reason, I was in a hurry. I hadn’t found the right one, I had started my research, and I couldn’t wait for the perfect notebook. So, I just grabbed one that I had. It’s the first time though, and it felt a little sad.”

Tracy Chevalier

On choosing a notebook for each novel that she writes in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-tracy-chevalier/ in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23)

“I have huge respect for short stories—I just find them much harder to get right than a novel. A novel is a lot baggier and it gives you more leeway to go on for too long or to make mistakes. Whereas in a short story, every sentence, every word, matters—and that’s very hard. I think it’s easier to write too much than it is to write exactly the right thing.”

Tracy Chevalier

On how she compares short story writing to novel writing in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-tracy-chevalier/ in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23)

“Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless…”

Tracy Chevalier

On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/17/tracy-chevalier-interview-last-runaway in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16)