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41 " Mary Anning and I are hunting fossils on the beach, she her creatures, I my fish. Our eyes are fastened to the sand and rocks as we make our way along the shore at different paces, first one in front, then the other. Mary stops to split open a nodule and find what may be lodged within. I dig through clay, searching for something new and miraculous. We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back. "
― Tracy Chevalier , Remarkable Creatures
42 " What do you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?''I believe. . . I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands --- or hundreds of thousands of years --- to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.''And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?''They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn't it? "
43 " Mientras contemplábamos el fósil, sentí por un momento que su espiral me absorbía y me hacía retroceder cada vez más lejos en el tiempo hasta que el pasado se perdía en su centro. "
44 " Los buscadores dedicamos horas y horas, día tras día, haga el tiempo que haga, con la cara quemada por el sol, el cabello enmarañado por el viento, los ojos siempre entornados y las manos agrietadas. Tenemos las botas llenas de barro y con manchas del agua de mar. Nuestra ropa acaba mugrienta al final de la jornada. A menudo no encontramos nada, pero somos pacientes y trabajadores y no nos desanimamos cuando regresamos a casa con las manos vacías. "
45 " En mi vida había oído nada semejante. Tenía ganas de seguir preguntándole al respecto, peros sus afirmaciones eran siempre tan tajantes que no admitían preguntas. Me hizo sentir como una idiota, incluso sabiendo que él era más idiota que yo. "
46 " Looking up at the stars so far away, I begun to feel there was a thread running between the earth and them. Another thread was strung out too, connecting the past to the future, with the ichie at one end, dying all that long time ago and waiting for me to find it, I didn't know what was at the other end of the thread. These two threads were so long I couldn't even begin to measure them, and and where one met the other, there was me. My life led up to that moment, then led away again, like the tide making its highest mark on the beach and then retreating "