Quotes from Donna Tartt

At first I thought they were playing to an

Perché se è vero che il male può discendere dalle buone azioni… dove sta scritto che da quelle cattive può venire solo il male? Magari a volte – il modo sbagliato è quello giusto? Magari prendi la strada sbagliata e ti porta comunque dove volevi? O vedila in un altro modo, certe volte puoi sbagliare tutto, e alla fine viene fuori che andava bene?

garden hoes, there was a small but conspicuous headline.

I could hear a gaggle of Americans, couples, laughing, saying their loud goodbyes as they parted for their respective rooms: old college friends, jobs in the financial sector, five-plus years of corporate law and Fiona entering the first grade in the fall, all's well in Oaklandia, well goodnight then, God we love you guys, a life I might have had myself except I didn't want it.

Go see him again why don't you, said Bunny, take him some flowers and tell him you love Plato and he'll be eating out of your hand.

They really knew how to work this edge, the Dutch painters?ripeness sliding into rot. The fruit's perfect but it won't last, it's about to go. And see here especially," she said, reaching over my shoulder to trace the air with her finger, "this passage?the butterfly." The underwing was so powdery an delicate it looked as if the color would smear if she touched it. "How beautiful he plays it. Stillness with a tremble of movement.

Un grande dolore, che comincio a comprendere solo adesso: il cuore non si sceglie. Non possiamo obbligarci a desiderare ciò che è bene per noi o per gli altri. Non siamo noi a determinare il tipo di persone che siamo.

And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I'd taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings...

I remember a story I read once, a soldier, was it at Shiloh? He was talking to me but not with his whole attention. Gettysburg? a soldier so mad with shock that he started burying birds and squirrels on the battlefield. You had lot of little things killed too, in the crossfire, little animals. Many tiny graves. p128

It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

Was it wrong, wanting to sleep late with the covers over my head and wander around a peaceful house with old seashells in drawers and wicker baskets of folded upholstery fabric stored under the parlor secretary, sunset falling in drastic coral spokes through the fanlight over the front door?

Elle ne s'intéressait pas aux livres dans lesquels les enfants grandissaient, car (dans la vie comme en littérature) ce processus entrainait un affaiblissement accéléré et inexplicable du caractère ; de façon totalement inattendue, les héros et les héroïnes renonçaient à leurs aventures pour un amour insipide, se mariaient et fondaient une famille, et, en général, se comportaient comme un troupeau de vaches.

exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he'd chosen to be happy

achingly conscious that I was alive and young on a beautiful day;

A character like his disintegrates under analysis. It can only be defined by the anecdote, the chance encounter or the sentence overheard.

In the old days, the snow would drift up to the eaves of the roofs and people would be trapped in their houses and starve to death, they wouldn't be found until spring.

And, lying on my bed in some biscuit-colored hotel room in Nice, with a balcony facing the Promenade des Anglais, I watch the clouds reflected on sliding panes and marvel even how my sadness can make me happy . . .

Fatal tendency to try to make interesting people good.

I thought she was going to say, because I don't love you, which probably would have been more or less the truth, but instead, to my surprise, she said: Because I love Henry. Henry's dead. I can't help it. I still love him. I loved him, too, I said. For just a moment, I thought I felt her waver. But then she looked away. I know you did, she said. But it's not enough.

Maybe sometimes—the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?

but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.

I had never been to Brooklyn and didn't know a thing about it but I liked the idea of living in a city - any city, especially a strange one - liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of odd, solitary life I might slip into?

What if—is more complicated than that? What if maybe opposite is true as well? Because, if bad can sometimes come from good actions—? where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes—the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?

Like something from Tolstoy, isn't it? he remarked. Julian looked over his shoulder, and I was startled to see that there was real delight on his face.