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21 " Life itself was far messier and didn’t end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. "
― Tracy Chevalier , Remarkable Creatures
22 " While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside. "
23 " There is no need to fear," he said, "for you are here with me. "
24 " I did not sleep well that night. I was not used to having the power to affect someone’s life so and did not easily carry its weight, as a man might have done. "
25 " Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach. "
26 " had come to London for a reason, not to enjoy anonymity and solitude whilst eyeing the wider horizon. "
27 " I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors’ families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining. "
28 " Although we kept the door ajar so that we could hear, we could not see beyond the gentlemen standing in front of the door in the crowded room. I felt trapped behind a wall of men that separated me from the main event. "
29 " not of this world, "
30 " It’s simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God’s early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes.” I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?” “I mean God wanted a better version—the crocodile we know now—and replaced it. "
31 " marry. Fanny was having all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her nor comfortable round her. That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots—no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet "
32 " Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning’s life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader’s patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in. "
33 " the grandeur false if you were not grand yourself. "
34 " Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mold, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable. "
35 " God placed the fossils there when He created the rocks, to test our faith, he responded at last. As He is clearly testing yours Miss Philpot. It is my faith in you that is being tested, I thought. "
36 " I am Elizabeth Philpot," I declard, "and I collect fossil fish. "
37 " Besides, no one can keep me away from my fish. Thank you, by the way, for the crate of fish you left for me. They are a delight. Come, let us go down to the sea. "
38 " I do not respect you, and I will never let you have any of my fossil fish "
39 " I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot , and I collected fossil fish. "
40 " So we continued, arm in arm along the beach, talking until at last we had no more to say, like a storm that blows itself out, and our eyes dropped to the ground, where the curies were waiting for us to find them. "