Tracy Chevalier quotes:

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

As a reader, I happen to like turning pages and wanting to know what happens next.

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.

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.

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.

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.

My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

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!

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.

Say something worth the words.

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.

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

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

That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.

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

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

Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.

I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot, and I collected fossil fish. Fish are not always beautiful, but they have pleasing shapes, they are practical, and they lead with their eyes. There is nothing shameful about them.

Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to London.

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.

I find that when I come out of the library I'm in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.