Quotes from Donna Tartt

Psychology is a terrible a word.

Mrs. Corcoran ignored him. "I guess you can go ahead and bring in those ferns," she said to the delivery boy, eyeing the foil-wrapped pots with loathing.

The business had upset him, that I knew, but I also knew that there was something about the operatic sweep of the search which could not fail to appeal to him and that he was pleased, however obscurely, with the aesthetics of the thing.

It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light as laughter, and that this was a secret of the universe.

Cinnamon-colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a nineteenth-century paintings. Rugs worn to threads, painted Japanese fans and antique valentines flickering in candlelight, Pierrots and doves and flowergarlanded hearts.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.

The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business

Henry saw it, too. "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. "Yes," he said. "Isn't it, though?

another paradoxical gem of my dad's: sometimes you have to lose to win.

with real greatness, there's a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn't matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It's the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock.

From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart.

Mi casa está donde yo esté.

To me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject.

He's so particilar, Rembrandt. Even his religious subjects — it's as if the saints came down to model for him in the life… You could pick him out of a line-up, couldn't you…? Goodness written all over him and yet always that twitch of worry and disquiet. That subtle shade of the betrayer

how even my sadness can make me happy

I am nothing in my soul if not possessive

despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I'd liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I'd met him was that he was never afraid. You didn't meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call "the Planet of Earth.

My sheets were damp with sweat. I got up and stuck my head out the window and took a few breaths. The chill air was so refreshing that I decided to put on some clothes and go for a walk. The moon was full and very bright. Everything was silent except for the chirp of the crickets and the full foamy toss of the wind in the trees.

Eugene accepted the legitimacy of such phenomena, much as he and his brothers accepted the pageantry and feuds of World Federation professional wrestling, not caring much if some of the matches were fixed.

Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: 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?

Who was it said that coincidence was just God's way of remaining anonymous?" "Now you really sound like my dad." "Who's to say that gamblers don't really understand it better than anyone else? Isn't everything worthwhile a gamble? Can't good come around sometimes through some strange back doors?

we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.