The Marriage Portrait Quotes

“She has always had a secret liking for this part of the embroidery, the ‘wrong’ side, congested with knots, striations of silk and twists of thread. How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Sadness keeps attempting to tie weights to her wrists and ankles, therefore she has to keep moving, she has to outpace it.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“The people who applaud the loudest, Lucrezia notes, are the ones who talked through the performance.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“The gown rustles and slides around her, speaking a glossolalia all of its own, the silk moving against the rougher nap of the underskirts, the bone supports of the bodice straining and squealing against their coverings, the cuffs scuffing and chafing the skin of her wrists, the stiffened collar hooking and nibbling at her nape, the hip supports creaking like the rigging of a ship. It is a symphony, an orchestra of fabrics, and Lucrezia would like to cover her ears, but she cannot.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“He says again that he will not hurt her, she must not be scared, he will not hurt her, he will not, he promises, the words whispered in his new rasping voice. And then he hurts her anyway. The pain is startling, and curious in its specificity”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“She is here now, outside the walls of the villa, where the night has painted its own version of the valley, in bold indigo strokes; where the wind animates this mysterious shaded landscape, setting the trees in motion, flinging night birds up to the blue-black air, driving angry blots across the unreadable face of the firmament.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“You shall not look at me, she wants to say, you shall not see into me. I will not be yours. How dare you assess me and find me lacking?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“You need a plan,” she hears—or seems to hear—her old nurse, Sofia, say, from a place near her elbow. “To lose your temper is to lose the battle.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“To lose your temper is to lose the battle.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“The animal was orange, burnished gold, fire made flesh; she was power and anger, she was vicious and exquisite;”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Does the light still slant into my chamber in the evening, just before it disappears below the city's roofs? Do you miss me? Even a little? Does anyone ever go and stand before my portrait?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“She paints for a long time, standing back from the tavola, leaning in close. She progresses from bowl to honey to the pleats and wrinkles in the cloth. She navigates her course through the arrangement of objects, how they interact with each other, the spaces and conversations between them, shrinking herself to the size of a beetle so that she may wander through the crannies between peaches, along the interlocking hexagons of the honeycomb. She feels her way around the corresponding painting, using her brushes like feet or antennae, seeking a route through the unfamiliar terrain of the items, hacking her way through the undergrowth of the work.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“She then leans over and thrusts the edge of the letter into the sconce burning on the wall of the stairwell. For a second or two, it seems the flame cannot believe its luck, refusing to consume the page. Then it comes to its senses, asserting its grasp, turning the edges of the paper black, shrivelling and devouring them.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Lucrezia had not known it was possible to fall asleep--or, at least, a halfway version of it--on horseback. That you could be riding along, a leading rein stretching from your horse's bridle to the hand of a groomsman, mounted beside you, and your head could tilt forward, slowly, so slowly, and you would believe you were just resting your eyes for a moment, but then you would jerk it upright again and see that the sun had slipped down behind the rocks and the trees had clothed themselves in darkness and the night sky was a black bowl upturned over your head.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“She feels it; he feels it. They know it and they know each other’s thoughts and they sense each other’s actions and fears. She does not know why this is or where it might lead, but
she knows it must remain hidden, and silent as the tongue in his head.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“The tigress didn’t so much pace as pour herself, as if her very essence was molten, simmering, like the ooze from a volcano.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Words pressed themselves into her memory, like a shoe sole into soft mud, which would dry and solidify, the shoe print preserved for”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“She had the strange and unaccustomed sensation of having been observed and, perhaps, understood. How odd it was that the person who seemed to comprehend her, to see into her very soul, should be a man who had glimpsed her only once.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Is it possible for a woman to be so unsettled in spirit that a child will have no hope of taking root within her?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“lashes the beast had received, the bitter longing for the vaporous and humid canopy of jungle and the enticing green tunnels through its undergrowth that she alone commanded, the searing pain in her heart at the bars that now enclosed her.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“To ignore it is to drain it of its power.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“A Lucrezia nunca le han cortado el pelo desde el día en que nació: suelto, le llega a los tobillos, un bruñido río cobrizo que cae desde la cabeza hasta el suelo. Puede envolverse en él como si de un sudario se tratara. Puede esconder muchas cosas: suelto, a toda ella; recogido, flores, semillas e incluso pequeños animalillos. Cepillado, cobra vida, se transforma, se separa en zarcillos sinuosos cuyas puntas se levantan en el aire semejantes a hilos sueltos de telaraña. Cuando se lo peinan manos expertas, como ahora, se puede entretejer y sujetar en forma de corona o de halo.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“It has been drummed into her by physicians and priests alike that the character of a child is determined by the mother’s thoughts at the moment of conception.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Because, says Emilia, there was a rumor about you. Someone swore that, when you were a little girl, he once saw you touch a tiger. And the tiger didn't harm you, it let you stroke it. It was always said that you had charmed the beast, like an enchantress. Impossible, of course, but—
Not impossible, says Lucrezia, not at all.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“May I keep this?” It was not a question. He was already turning away, placing her miniature painting inside his leather book and tying the straps, so that the bird could never fly away again, even if it had lived.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be
asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Eleonora is a woman all too aware of her rarity and worth: she possesses not only a body able to produce a string of heirs, but also a beautiful face, with a forehead like carved ivory, eyes wide-set and deep brown, a mouth that looks well in both a smile and a pout. On top of all this, she has a quick and mercurial mind.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“somewhat”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“This is a different man, surely, from the one who ordered Contrari's death. It cannot have been him. This is her husband, who loves her, or seems to; that was the ruler of Ferrara. They are the same man, they are different men, the same yet different.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait