The Swan Thieves Quotes
"How had we failed them and—even more—their innocent victims?"
"We live in an era of talk shows and gargantuan indiscretion, but our profession is particularly rigid in its silences—careful, legal, responsible."
"I have a moment now and then—as I peel an orange and take it from kitchen counter to table—when I feel almost a pang of contentment, perhaps at that raw color."
"I dreamed of saving lives, of stepping forward at the right moment with some lifesaving revelation."
"You can even talk with Mary if you want. You can look at the pictures if you want. I don’t care."
"Bless you for your kind attentions to us all."
"I waited. I became aware of the birds in the trees around the house, calling or singing, taking off with a rush."
"But if he asks me, it will mean he’s talking. Even if he’s angry about it."
"I am pleased to think you liked my jeune fille so much."
"I want to get married to Robert and have a ring on my finger and a baby."
"Those eyes burned from the page—they were large and shining and without any attempt at self-disguise."
"He slept so deeply that you could shake him or speak to him for long minutes with no result."
"The soothing shade from the oaks over my head and shoulders."
"I left the kitchen. If he lost his job through his own irresponsibility, I would go back to Ann Arbor and live with my mother."
"Sometimes I rolled over in bed and found him a hand-span away from me."
"I knew already that nothing would be the same, ever, no matter how much I tried to feel about Robert as I had before."
"I had come to believe that she was imaginary, a fiction, part of the vision that drove his gifts."
"I watched him lift up the children and felt just by seeing it how his rough face brushed their delicate ones and how that pleased them."
"I used some of his shirts, torn into thirds, to dust the furniture—I could have pulled one of them out of any pile of rags and known it was his, known it was him, his lingering smell, his fabric."
"Marriages are like certain books, a story where you turn the last page and you think it’s over, and then there’s an epilogue, and after that you’re inclined to go on wondering about the characters or imagining that their lives continue without you, dear reader."
"Painting is almost as old as human beings, if the caves of Europe are any indication."
"Every painter is a beginner, in a real sense, every day of his life."
"It’s always hard to know where to begin with painting."
"You can’t wash it off with any kind of soap."
"Did you take art in high school? Have you been drawing a long time?"
"He was a tall man, and he gave an impression of height and energy even greater than his actual size."
"I love it more than anything I’ve ever found."
"I had already spent my adolescence in a world I shared with myself, the occasional friend or boyfriend, and my journals."
"Sometimes he would say he’d be home for dinner and then stay out all night."
"It’s one of the only gifts from him I’ve kept; he gave possessions away as casually as he helped himself to other people’s."
"It was a happy sound—I laughed, too, when I heard it."
"No one knows anything about a painting except the painting itself."
"She’s not my wife, and I don’t use photographs."
"If I tell you who she is, will you keep it a secret?"
"I met my wife rather late in life; I was already forty-three and she was forty."
"There are different ways of taking grief in different circumstances."
"You must say to her, ‘Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you.’"
"It gave me a stabbing excitement, like what I used to feel when Muzzy drove us to Cape May in New Jersey for our annual vacation."
"It took me some study to find the right road through that town and out to the retreat."
"The dining hall, where everyone met that night for the first meal, was in a carriage house with its dividing walls knocked out."
"It was like the first day in a new school, or like my college orientation, where you realize that you know no one at all."
"I remembered that solid, graceful balance from his perambulations around the studio."
"I glanced at my watch; I was in plenty of time for registration."
"At the Maine border there was a sign for moose crossing, and the roadsides became crowded with evergreens."
"The house was enormous, painted a dull pink, and the lawn was not only a lawn but gardens, trellises, paths, a pink summerhouse, old trees, a flat area where someone had set up croquet, a hammock."
"The morning was gray with mist, clearing in uneven patches overhead to show pellucid sky, the evergreens full of crows and cobwebs, the birches already turning over a few yellow leaves."
"I stood frozen, staring at his ear, at the heavy curl of hair around that ear, at his still-familiar shoulder, at the blade of his long hand raised in argument."
"I tried not to turn to watch his face, but I couldn’t help watching, too."
"I stood as still as I could, afraid I might begin to tremble visibly."
"It’s not that other people’s idiocy makes me shy; it simply makes me want to walk away."
"I felt outside the bounds of history and convention."
"I remembered now those gestures of hand and arm, and the curling edges of his mouth, the oddly sculpted face, the charm that was charming because there was no awareness behind it."
"We chatted in a desultory way on the plane, as if we’d been traveling together for years."
"My shoulder came alive under her nodding head."
"Perhaps nothing matters but this odd joy they give each other."
"His closeness is her comfort, the small human note in a sublime landscape."
"This is what it might be like with the lights blown out, the two of them together without any barrier."
"The water was astoundingly warm, like tea left in a pot."
"The taste of lime and cilantro lingering in my mouth like a promise."
"The heart does not go backward. Only the mind."
"She was, I felt with a wave of affection, a person who did not even want to know everything."
"He regards her for a long minute, then picks up the book. 'Do you want to hear the story of Leda?'"
"Her soul tugs inside her. Perhaps that is the reality of sin, to know the shape of the soul and feel it chafing inside the body."
"I wondered if I should wait in the hall while she used the room or the bathroom."
"The moment has come; his challenge, her panic, her longing, all rise up in her rib cage."
"A moment later, she noticed me and turned. 'No more light.'"
"The streets of Acapulco seemed dreamlike to me."
"I can draw the muscles that give the waist its supple bend to each side."
"Sometime close to morning, Mary put her head against my neck and slept."
"She sees a particular caress that must have lasted two or three minutes at most but that has stayed like a presence on her skin."
"She feels a kind of indignity on behalf of the old lady, whom Olivier could properly marry and make happy."
"You can look in it if you want. It is still empty except for one thing."
"I knew it had to be Oliver, because I have few visitors and Yvonne would never touch them—she knows how I feel about them."
"For a few minutes during the first visit of Robert Oliver, I thought I might even give it to him someday."
"The letters were all I had from Aude’s love for her mother. They are precious to me."
"I felt rather than saw the old man’s rage, couched in these delicate terms."
"I am still waiting to know for certain what to do with it."
"I have always felt they must have been rather mercenary types."
"She stopped painting too young. I must continue for her."
"Someone must avenge her, since she might have continued to paint for decades if she had not been cruelly prevented."
"You may go in to see The Swan Thieves. I think I will stay here."
"I must have stood rooted there a long time, staring, because I felt a sudden fatigue wash over me—the hopelessness of imagining other lives."
"And he would be happy to do the same for any future paintings, with the understanding that I would be spared any unpleasantness."
"You never write, but I feel your presence in every one of my days."
"But how could you, my love, put away your genius?"
"The sketch hung, framed, on the old plaster wall of the entry, a bold fragment in graphite on paper."
"Many things are never explained, you know. It is not really a bad thing."
"You know so much about Béatrice," he said, with wonder in his voice.
"I cannot describe how this letter made my heart sink."
"I have had my large rewards, my joys, but the small ones are as sweet as any."