Tracy Chevalier
Born:
19 October 1962 in Washington, DC. Youngest of 3 children. Father was a photographer for The Washington Post.
Childhood:
Nerdy. Spent a lot of time lying on my bed reading. Favorite authors back then: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Joan Aiken, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander. Book I would have taken to a desert island: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.
Education:
BA in English, Oberlin College, Ohio, 1984. No one was surprised that I went there; I was made for such a progressive, liberal place.
MA in creative writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, 1994. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not you can be taught to write. Why doesn’t anyone ask that of professional singers, painters, dancers? That year forced me to write all the time and take it seriously.
Geography:
Moved to London after graduating from Oberlin in 1984. I had studied for a semester in London and thought it was a great place, so came over for fun, expecting to go back to the US after 6 months to get serious. I’m still in London, and still not entirely serious. Even have dual citizenship – though I keep the American accent intact.
Family:
1 English husband + 1 English son + 1 tortoiseshell cat.
Career:
Before writing, was a reference book editor, working on encyclopedias about writers. (Yup, still nerdy.) Learned how to research and how to make sentences better. Eventually I wanted to fix my own sentences rather than others’, so I quit and did the MA.
Writing:
Talked a lot about becoming a writer as a kid, but actual pen to paper contact was minimal. Started writing short stories in my 20s, then began first novel, The Virgin Blue, during the MA year. With Girl With a Pearl Earring (written in 1998), I became a full-time writer, and have since juggled it with motherhood
“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.”
“Perhaps thee will best understand what Abigail is like if I tell thee that when she quilts she prefers to stitch in the ditch, hiding her poor stitches in the seams between the blocks.”
“You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.”
“Only thieves and children run.”
“They were a mother's words, words I would say to my own daughter if I were concerned for her”
“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”
“I have a bed and enough to eat and kind people about me. God is still with me. For these things I am grateful and have no reason to complain”
“Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.”
“Everybody asks the same questions -- but they don't know that they ask the same questions.”
“I have spent my life waiting for something to happen,’ she said. ‘And I have come to understand that nothing will. Or it already has, and I blinked during that moment and it's gone. I don't know which is worse — to have missed it or to know there is nothing to miss.”
“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”
“Era un pensiero doloroso ma la verità lo è sovente.”
“There is no need to fear," he said, "for you are here with me.”
“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.”
“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!”
“Say something worth the words.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.”
“It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.”
“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.”