“the pope had granted the accademia di San Luca the annual right – on saint Luke’s day – to free a condemned man.”
“It was the prerogative of the powerful to betray their servants. You played their game or you played your own. The end was the same.”
“CUTTING HIS BEATITUDE down to size on canvas and throwing rocks through his landlady’s window weren’t all M was doing on his return to Rome”
“M got into difficulties. Somebody – and since the client was dead it wasn’t clear who – didn’t like his two paintings.”
“I can’t swallow Gregori’s insistent proposal of the Toothpuller as M’s and I think M used help on the second versions of early paintings like Lute Player II.”
“Katherine is the master of anger; she dominates anger. She takes anger in her hands and twists its neck, ripping its head off. She throws anger against the wall and stomps it to death. Her voice rises, it changes, it conjures up ghosts and cusses in a spitting Irish brogue. Then, when she's tapped out empty, she picked anger up between her a thumb and a forefinger and carries it outside and drops it in the trash. On her way back, she scoops up forgiveness like a bouquet, sniffs it deep and arranges it in a vase. She sets forgiveness down, shining in the middle of everything.”
“Pain is such a useful thing. It corrects us when we're wrong. It shapes our character. It teaches us that we're alive.”
“Life is pain. Life is chaos. It´s never easy. Always a struggle.”
“Almost.
It’s a big word for me.
I feel it everywhere.
Almost home.
Almost happy.
Almost changed.
Almost, but not quite.
Not yet.
Soon, maybe.
I’m hoping hard for that.”
“He was, she realised, quite graceful. The very idea surprised her. Male grace was a quality she'd never thought of beyond the ballroom; either a man could dance a quadrille with skill and without stepping on her feet or he could not. But here was another kind of grace altogether--and untrained grace, an instinctive animal grace.”
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