Portrait Of An Unknown Woman Quotes
"During the long, bleak winter of the pandemic, when they had sold but a single painting, she had used the contraption to mercilessly cull the gallery’s swollen archives."
"In his next life he would return as an environmentally friendly coffee cup."
"Sarah had nevertheless opened it; a former clandestine officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, she had no qualms about reading other people’s mail."
"His first impression of the letter was that its author, a certain Madame Valerie Bérrangar, had the most exquisite handwriting he had seen in ages."
"That’s where you’re wrong, petal. All the blackmailers and extortionists I’ve ever met had impeccable manners."
"It was the incomparable Julian Isherwood, Julie to his friends, Juicy Julie to his partners in the occasional crime of drink."
"He laughed more easily. He allowed his hair to grow."
"He was the director of the paintings department of the Tiepolo Restoration Company."
"Consider yourself lucky. I had to learn how to do almost everything with my left hand."
"I flatlined twice. The second time, I was clinically dead for nearly ten minutes."
"It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a life after this one, Cesare. It just means that I have no memory of anything that happened after I lost consciousness."
"He’d be sitting down to a nice long lunch later today if only he’d identified himself."
"He says you didn’t give him much of a chance."
"Immediate deportation or a lengthy incarceration. I’m leaning toward the latter."
"Money doesn’t come from singing, my friend. Money is earned by accepting and then fulfilling contracts."
"You’re an ancient person of the Mediterranean as well."
"As for the former British commando, his fair hair, blue eyes, perfect English, and elite military training allowed him to fulfill contracts that were far beyond the skill level of my Corsican-born taddunaghiu."
"He never stopped painting them, you know. He needed some form of legitimate income."
"Did the auction house really not realize that it was selling a fake? How is this possible?"
"I’m going to wait for one of them to get that dog under control."
"She gave us a million euros in cash and said she would be in touch."
"It was thirty-four million at the time," admitted Françoise Vionnet.
"If only someone would pay her for doing that," said her mother judgmentally.
"You were a front woman for a forger," said Gabriel.
"Information is the key to my longevity, Monsieur Allon."
"You’re all the same, you art forgers. You all have something to prove."
"I’m planning to leave a Gentileschi with my front man in Florence."
"I hired a gang of French art thieves to steal Sunflowers from the Van Gogh Museum."
"You have to darken the garments of the two elders. Otherwise, I won’t be able to convince Oliver Dimbleby."
"The logical conclusion was that it was only a matter of time before another noteworthy picture emerged from the same European collection."
"I was wondering whether you might be free for a drink at, say, half past five."
"I was thinking about embarking on a life of crime, and I was wondering whether you would be interested in a piece of the action."
"She goes to New York about once a month. Apparently, she lived there for a few years in the mid-aughts."
"The market for museum-quality Old Masters is a small one, Signore Calvi. There are only so many good pictures and so many collectors and museums who are willing to pay millions for them."
"You can't have them. Because they belong to me. And so do you, Magdalena. Never forget that."
"I didn’t buy a painting in Florence, Phillip. I bought the greatest art forger in history. He’ll pay dividends for years to come."
"I was the daughter of an art dealer. I knew how the business worked."
"Anyone who was anyone was using. And everyone knew my name."
"Phillip gravitated toward the art world because that’s where the money was."
"The money isn’t sitting in an account at Citibank. I’ll have to unload several paintings to make you whole."
"I’m afraid patience is a virtue I can’t afford at the moment."
"And so do you, Magdalena. Never forget that."
"It seemed he had become the first port of call for anyone with a problem, be they adulterous British prime ministers, supreme Roman pontiffs, or London art dealers."
"In a field like theirs, the new kids were frequently better than the old hands."
"Each entry included the name of the work, the artist, the support, the dimensions, the date of execution, the estimated value, the current owner, and the painting’s exact location in the warehouse."
"The warehouse also contained sixteen canvases by a once promising Spanish artist named Magdalena Navarro."
"The overwhelming majority of the canvases had been acquired through phantom sales conducted within Magdalena’s distribution network."
"His clients, all of whom were sufficiently wealthy to afford his services, were a rogues’ gallery of fraudsters, schemers, scammers, larcenists, embezzlers, insider traders, philanderers, and sexual deviants of every stripe."
"He dwelled in a proverbial house of glass. He did not make a habit of throwing stones."
"I’m the man who makes Phillip’s problems go away."
"Magdalena cast her eye down the list and call out when she spotted a painting she knew to be a forgery."
"Phillip killed the call and tried to return the phone. 'Keep it,' said Silk. 'Leave your personal phone on the desk connected to a charger and go to your place on the island.'"
"If you do that again, I’m going to come down there and kill you."
"I’m not a perfect person, Mr. Allon. But I’ve turned over a new leaf as well."
"I would be honored to serve as your front man. I insist, however, on receiving no share of the profits."
"We’ll settle the matter quietly, and never speak of it again."
"You owe my friend Sarah Bancroft seventy-five thousand dollars."
"It would have been, visually, a different film."
"Increasingly, much of the world’s most valuable art resides not in museums or private homes but in darkened, climate-controlled vaults."
"We are blessed with family and friends who fill our lives with love and laughter at critical times during the writing year."