Quotes from Donna Tartt

lo extraño era más bien descubrir en el presente un fragmento tan brillante del pasado vivo, dañado y erosionado pero no destruido.

Why hadn't I grabbed his arm and begged him one last time to get in the car, come on, fuck it Boris, just like skipping school, we'll be eating breakfast over cornfields when the sun comes up?

It was like staring into a clear pool that seemed shallow, inches deep, but you might toss a coin in that glassy water and it would fall and fall, spiralling down forever without even striking the bottom.

The swish of the oars and the hypnotic thrum of dragonflies blended with his academic monotone.

Giovanna d'Arco aveva capeggiato un esercito quand'era poco più grande di Harriet, e nondimeno, il Natale scorso, suo padre le aveva regalato un offensivo gioco di società chiamato Cosa farò da grande? Era un gioco del tutto insulso, teso a indirizzare le future carriere delle partecipanti, ma per quanto bene una giocasse, soltanto quattro sbocchi le si paravano davanti: insegnante, ballerina, madre o infermiera.

my diddy said it was something wrong with any man that'll sit down in a chair and read a book.

III. We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves. —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Harriet felt as though one of the gruesome transparencies of Your Developing Body-all womb, and tubes, and mammaries-had been projected over her poor dumb body; as if all anybody saw when they looked at her-even with her clothes on-were organs and genitalia and hair in unseemly places. Knowing that it was inevitable (just a natural part of growing up!) was no better than knowing that someday she would die. Death, at least, was dignified: an end to dishonor and sorrow.

meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not

By quarter of ten I was sitting on the floor of my room at Hobie's house with my mind reeling like a spun-down top wobbling and veering from side to side.

The hedges and the acres and acres of lawn were covered in a network of spider web that caught the dew in beads so that it glistened white as frost.

His face had grown so poisonous to her that now she wouldn't even touch the photograph except to pick it up by the edges. The despair of her house was the work of his hand. He deserved to die. Throwing the snake on his grandmother had given her no relief. It was him she wanted.

there's one thing I'm good at, it's lying on my feet. It's sort of a gift I have.

Zidovi boje cimeta, kiša na prozorskim daskama, zamašna tišina i osje?aj dubine i daljine, poput laka na pozadini slike iz devetnaestog stolje?a.

when my cat died I had to go out and borrow all these Simon and Garfunkel records.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely

And now," said Julian, when everything was quiet, "I hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?

When we are strongest—who draws back? Most merry—who falls down laughing? When we are very bad,—what can they do to us? —ARTHUR RIMBAUD

She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose white scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze; a girl as bewitching, and clever, as any girl who ever lived.

Yet even in death, my dad was ineradicable, no matter how hard I tried to wish him out of the picture– for there he always was, in my hands and my voice and my walk, in my darting sideways glance as I left the restaurant with Hobie, the very set of my head recalling his old, preening habit of checking himself out in any mirror-like surface.

though the darkness sometimes lifted just enough so I could construe my surroundings, familiar shapes solidifying like bedroom furniture at dawn, my relief was never more than temporary because somehow the full morning never came, things always went black before I could orient myself and there I was again with ink poured in my eyes, guttering around in the dark.

The gesture was, to me, tremendously touching and all of a sudden I realised I had been wrong about these people. These were good people, common people; the salt of the earth; people whom I should count myself fortunate to know.

Maybe, I thought- reaching in the bag, taking out a stack of money and looking it over- maybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in. You didn't feel anything at first.

I don't expect you to understand but it's rough to be in love with the wrong person.