About Tracy Chevalier: Tracy Chevalier is an American historical novelist. She has written seven novels. She is best known for her second novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was made into a 2003 film, starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.
You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.
It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.
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...
Although I always said that I wanted to be a writer from childhood, I hadn't actually done much about it until I came to London.
As a reader, I happen to like turning pages and wanting to know what happens next.
Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.
My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.
We do not need such things to help us to see God,” I countered. “We have His Word, and that is enough.
It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.
Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.
I find that when I come out of the library I’m in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life.” [ magazine, March 12, 2002]
Say something worth the words.
I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was wri...
I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.
As I get older, I use less jewelry - necklace or earrings each morning, not both; my clothes are getting more basic - fewer colours and simpler cuts; and my make-up is stripped back to basics.
Younger women tend to be busier, wearing more layers and more make-up. I don't know if it's because older women are more confident, or just that we don't care any more. But that pared-down approach is the same with the sentences I write; I take out a...
