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Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier

Top 10 Best Quotes

“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.”

“There was something different about her, though I could not say exactly what it was. It was as if she were more certain. If someone were sketching her they would use clear, strong lines, whereas before they might have used faint marks and more shading. She was like a fossil that’s been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.”

“What do you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?' 'I believe. . . I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands --- or hundreds of thousands of years --- to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.' 'And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?' 'They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn't it?”

“I never said I didn't want to marry. It just didn't happen-Iam not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own.”

“I had always thought of the sea as a boundary keeping me in my place on land. Now, though, it became an opening.”

“This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favored, by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she’d met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen’s books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier and didn’t end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.”

“But dying was no drama. Dying was cold and hard and painful, and dull. It went on too long. I was exhausted and growing bored with it. Now I had too much time to think about whether I was going to die from the tide”

“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.”

“He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I.”

“have noticed that people do not change which feature they lead with, any more than they change in character.”

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Book Keywords:

humor, wisdom

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