Quotes from Donna Tartt

i had just come back from the brink of Death itself, back to the sun and air. Now I was free; and my life, which I had thougt was lost, stretched out indescribably precious and sweet before me.

They turned up the volume of the inner monologue, magnified qualities already present to great excess, made people so much themselves that they couldn't stand it. "And how can we lose this maddening

The swish of the oars and the hypnotic thrum of dragonflies blended with his academic monotone. Camilla, flushed and sleepy, trailed her hand in the water. Yellow birch leaves blew from the trees and drifted down to rest on the surface.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own.

What is unthinkable is undoable.

And if what they say is true--if every great painting is really a self-portrait--what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself?

Deprendi miserum et

I had spent dozens of hours studying the photographs as though if I stared at them long enough and longingly enough I would, by some sort of osmosis, be transported into their clear, pure silence.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

the world is much stranger than we know or can say. And I know how you think, or how you like to think, but maybe this is one instance where you can't boil down to pure 'good' or pure 'bad' like you always want to do—? Like, your two different piles? Bad over here, good over here? Maybe not quite so simple.

how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet—for me, anyway—all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

Why did i obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I didn't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such an interest in me.

Puedes equivocarte de camino y que aun así este te lleve a donde quieres ir. O, viceversa, a veces puedes hacerlo todo mal y aun así sale bien.

BEFORE BORIS, I HAD borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was.

If I thought my kid was a bastard I would sure the fuck name him something else.

he said well if you can't plan it out ahead of time, you'll just have to work it out as you go along

And as much as I'd like to believe there's a truth beyond illusion, Ive come to believe that there's no truth beyond illusion. Because, between 'reality' on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there's a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

For a moment I was disoriented, seized by panic; could a ghost embody itself through wavelengths, electronic dots, a picture tube? What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?

I don't know where Henry was. Probably looking at the moon and reciting some poem from the T'ang Dynasty.

Death is the mother of beauty. And what is beauty? Terror. Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming. And if beauty is terror, then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it? To live. To live forever.

She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty—a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room.

beauty is terror. whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it

Over 2,000 reptiles await you.

I'd be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can't think of a better way to go insane.")