The Last Painting Of Sara De Vos Quotes
"We’re dipping shrimp in cocktail sauce, working Rachel’s best china out on the terrace because it’s mild for early November, you understand, while two thugs—middlemen disguised as caterers, let’s say—are swapping out the real painting with a meticulous fake."
"No, he’ll keep all that to himself, like a private faith to a fickle god. He’s agnostic but prone to bouts of wild superstition, a personality flourish he tries to conceal."
"Lately, there’s been the quiet fatigue they both ignore."
"As it happens, Sputnik Two is giving out the same signal as the first one, so if I can find the right frequency we should be able to hear the Russkie mongrel orbiting above us."
"She surveys the crowd to calculate how the troupe might go over."
"In the long unraveling of her life, Sara will always come back to the leviathan."
"The smell itself limits her social life—an atmosphere of oxide and musk."
"Her dissertation on Dutch women painters of the Golden Age sits unfinished in her apartment, a half-typed sheet of paper mildewing in the mouth of a Remington."
"She’s terrified such memories will dwindle and fade, that one day she’ll wake up and remember nothing but the smell of Kathrijn’s damp, salty hair at the seaside."
"Both times we already had names picked out, two separate lists that I kept in my pocket at all times."
"The sound of his first name is alive with intimacy."
"He can feel himself folding up the old childless ache just like that."
"He feels lightened, as if he’s narrowly escaped something terrible in the world."
"She’s back in the kitchen when the wall-mounted phone rings."
"The past is more alive to her than the present, she realizes, and the thought is suffocating."
"He’s forever hearing the sound of turbines, of jets coming in to land."
"She ferries the plate of food out to her guests and tells them the quiche will be a few more minutes."
"She feels her chest tighten, like someone is pushing the heel of their hand between her shoulder blades."
"It’s good press for us. I assume we’ll be featured in your program?"
"The truth is she became tirelessly disciplined and scrupulous as an academic; she forever felt the aftermath of her decision to copy the painting for money, experienced the fact of having been spared as viscerally as survivor’s guilt."
"For centuries everyone thought Judith Leyster’s paintings were by Frans Hals."
"We need an accountant, not a glassblower or painter at the helm."
"I’m convinced that Sara de Vos was the most important female painter of her age."
"This is not an easy profession for women, Eleanor. You know that."
"If Dickens had written a single book none of us would know his name."
"You can cook while sitting on the edge of your Murphy bed. Who was Murphy, anyhow, and why the hell does he get a bed named after him?"
"You can feel the bracing cold in this one. See how the horseman’s mantle covers everything but his eyes and nose, making him look a little like a hangman."
"In twenty years I’ve never seen an apprentice quite bungle a painting like that. Maybe your sort is better suited for a different kind of trade."
"What we’re trying to buy, when we buy art, is ourselves."
"The art crowd thinks this is all a bit seedy and untoward."
"It’s clear to him now that she was not the calculating mind behind the forgery swap."
"She’s suddenly terrified that she won’t remember what Kathrijn looked like without the envelope of the house."
"I imagine he haunts your dreams and for that I’m regretful."
"Only the real artist has the false beginning."
"I’ve been spoilt. You people pay me to do something I’d do for free."
"A painted commemoration will seal this era nicely, tie a knot from the loose ends."
"My grandmother had an entire set of silverware given to us by Cornelis’s father, all of it engraved. This one spoon is all that remains."
"I’m a bit of a homebody. It’s sad, really. I just find it difficult to like people."
"The past is so clear to her that she could paint it."
"Art is our most universal language and our most vigilant witness. It watches us and reflects our culture back upon us."
"Sometimes regret eats you alive, but actually, it keeps you alive. It gives you something to push against."
"The whole point of the reward and the newspaper ad was an apology. That money was meant for you."
"I never stopped painting the beautiful fake."
"After the forgery, I went to England, where I was the most law-abiding citizen in the world. I admonished my ex-husband for taking bogus deductions on his taxes and never drove above the speed limit. I acted like a goddamn saint. It’s laughable, really."
"You spoke about the Vermeers like old lovers. They are, in a way."
"You carry grudges and regrets for decades, tend them like gravesite vigils, then even after you lay them down they linger on the periphery, waiting to ambush you all over again."
"You live in three rooms of your twenty-room triplex, whole areas cordoned off like cholera wards."
"We rearrange the living, exaggerate the light, intimate dusk when it’s really noonday sun."
"Your career passes in a flash. Take it from me."