I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

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.

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.

It's those little daily incidents of life that are dramatic, and if you put a frame around it , suddenly they become much bigger and much more important than you ever imagined.

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home

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!