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2e25551
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The space behind me in the frame was not so much a space in the conventional sense as a perfectly composed harmony, a wider, more real-seeming reality with a deep silence around it, beyond sound and speech; where all was stillness and clarity, and at the same time, as in a backward-run movie, you could also imagine spilled milk leaping back into the pitcher, a jumping cat flying backward to land silently upon a table, a waystation where tim..
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Donna Tartt |
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8eee7f9
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Whatever else one may say about guilt, it certainly lends one diabolical powers of invention;
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Donna Tartt |
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bcdbb4b
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Is it easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness.
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Donna Tartt |
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aef864d
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their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be
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reality
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Donna Tartt |
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a1c1e22
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What mattered more was the feeling, a rich sweet undertow so commanding that in class, on the school bus, lying in bed trying to think of something safe or pleasant, some environment or configuration where my chest wasn't tight with anxiety, all I had to do was sink into the blood-warm current and let myself spin away to the secret place where everything was all right.
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Donna Tartt |
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fc8e6aa
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I am sorry, as well, to present such a sketchy and disappointing exegesis of what is in fact the central part of my story.
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Donna Tartt |
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4ae22bc
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I never got used to the way the horizon there could just erase itself and leave you marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape that was like a sketch for the world you knew...
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Donna Tartt |
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1c39709
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Understand, by saying 'God,' I am merely using 'God' as reference to long-term pattern we can't decipher.
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Donna Tartt |
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6d86010
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What I did experience when alone was a sort of general neurotic horror, a common attack of nerves and self-loathing magnified to the power of ten. Every cruel or fatuous thing I'd ever said came back to me with an amplified clarity, no matter how I talked to myself or jerked my head to shake the thoughts away: old insults and guilts and embarrassments stretching clear back to childhood--the crippled boy I'd made fun of, the Easter chick I'd..
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Donna Tartt |
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9297aa4
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Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,
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Donna Tartt |
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7a54afa
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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 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 A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's g..
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understanding
people
sadness
life
love
lonliness
self
path
questions
reality-of-life
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Donna Tartt |
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beb38eb
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Life: vacant, vain, intolerable. What loyalty did I owe it? None whatsoever.
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Donna Tartt |
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e476e7b
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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 solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.
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Donna Tartt |
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3d0222e
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my own fatal tendency to try to make interesting people good. And
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Donna Tartt |
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883521a
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Sometimes, when there's been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over. Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity. Little things--a cricket on a stem, the veined branches on a leaf--are magnified, brought from the background in achingly clear focus. And
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Donna Tartt |
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b73ea51
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It's crazy, she'd said, but 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.
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Donna Tartt |
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2cd9014
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I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.
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indelible
donna-tartt
the-secret-history
haunted
prologue
guilt
memory
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Donna Tartt |
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77658ea
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overly sensitive to the souls of rooms and objects, the emanations
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Donna Tartt |
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32db5b1
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Because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe. The basic fact of existence--of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do--is catastrophe.
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Donna Tartt |
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0c472a7
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Because I don't care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat.
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Donna Tartt |
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cb275a3
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I was struck by something rather obvious - namely, that any religious ritual is arbitrary unless one is able to see past it to a deeper meaning.
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Donna Tartt |
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6081dce
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He's telling you that living things don't last--it's all temporary. Death in life.
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Donna Tartt |
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60a9405
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I mean we think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it's not at all. Time is something which defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no 'I,' and yet it's not at all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hears in Eastern religions, the self being a drop of water swallo..
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time
self
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Donna Tartt |
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3f88f89
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Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital.
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kids
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Donna Tartt |
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598f240
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I think we're much more hypocritical about illness, and poverty, than were people in former ages," I remember Julian saying once. "In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true. Does anyone remember Plato's definition of Justice in the Republic? Justice, in a society, is when each level of a hierarchy works within its place and is content with it. A poor man who..
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Donna Tartt |
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49d15b8
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maybe that's what's waiting for us at the end of the journey, a majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through the doors of it, what we find ourselves gazing at in astonishment when God finally takes His hands off our eyes and says: Look!
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Donna Tartt |
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0126c00
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And always, always, that same toast. Live forever.
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Donna Tartt |
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06fdb86
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That was a cozy night, a happy night; lamps lit, sparkle of glasses, rain falling heavy on the roof. Outside, the treetops tumbled and tossed, with a foamy whoosh like club soda bubbling up in the glass. The windows were open and a damp cool breeze swirled through the curtains, bewitchingly wild and sweet.
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Donna Tartt |
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72e421b
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Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.
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Donna Tartt |
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eebecbb
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Because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe.
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Donna Tartt |
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d0c87dd
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I don't care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe.
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Donna Tartt |
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0c78ce9
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Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you live yours.
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Donna Tartt |
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bea019b
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He's telling you that living things don't last--it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer--there it is.
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Donna Tartt |
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00b288e
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Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? 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."
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Donna Tartt |
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42f0b1b
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She was the missing kingdom, the unbruised part of myself I'd lost with my mother.
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Donna Tartt |
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1307198
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How had I fetched up into this strange new life, where drunk foreigners shouted around me in the night, and all my clothes were dirty, and nobody loved me?
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Donna Tartt |
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34eb1f5
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Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.
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Donna Tartt |
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e279603
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I could do what I had to. I'd done it before: gone blank, pushed forward.
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Donna Tartt |
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77b3cc9
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we'd have to devise a plan, probably a rather Pyrrhic and unsatisfactory one.
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Donna Tartt |
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6e8bf59
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La gente muore, questo e un dato di fatto>> diceva la mamma. <>
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italian-quotes
storia
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Donna Tartt |
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4607c6a
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People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselve..
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Donna Tartt |
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a8754d7
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From the sound of it, had I stayed in California I might have ended up in a cult or at the very least practicing some weird dietary restriction.
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Donna Tartt |
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5d34350
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I was confused by this sudden glare of attention; it was as if the characters in a favorite painting, absorbed in their own concerns, had looked up out of the canvas and spoken to me.
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simile
voyeur
the-secret-history
painting
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Donna Tartt |
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a832d43
|
Years ago, in an old notebook, I wrote: "One of Julian's most attractive qualities is his inability to see anyone, or anything, in its true light." And under it, in a different ink, "maybe one of my most attractive qualities, as well(?)" -Richard"
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Donna Tartt |