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de48bb0
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We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves. -- FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
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Donna Tartt |
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4a8b2a4
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And beauty is terror,' said Julian, 'then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?' 'To live,' said Camilla. 'To live forever,' said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.
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life
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Donna Tartt |
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d6dbd5f
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I read The Great Gatsby. It is one of my favorite books and I had taken it out of the library in hopes that it would cheer me up; of course, it only made me feel worse, since in my own humorless state I failed to see anything except what I construed as certain tragic similarities between Gatsby and myself.
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Donna Tartt |
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0c7c174
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The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business. Prior to this first weekend in the country, my recollections of that fall are distant and blurry: from here on out, they come into a sharp, delightful focus. It is here that the stilted mannequins of my initial acquaintance begin to yawn and stretch and come to life. It was months before the gloss and mystery of newness, which kept me from seeing them with much objectivity, w..
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Donna Tartt |
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587abbf
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Now of course, it would be easy for me to veer to the opposite extreme. I could say the secret of Julian's charm was that he latched on to young people who wanted to feel better than everybody else; that he had a strange gift for twisting feelings of inferiority into superiority and arrogance. I could also say that he did this not through altruistic motives but selfish ones, in order to fulfill some egotistic impulse of his own. And I could..
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Donna Tartt |
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telephone, "Myriam's not my wife! This--" he handed"
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Donna Tartt |
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ae21891
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I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone's life when character is fixed forever.
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Donna Tartt |
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ad2dacb
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Three coffees, two with milk, please," said Francis to the fat woman behind the counter. "No milk, just Cremora." "Well, then, just black, I guess." He turned to us. "Have you seen the paper this morning?"
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Donna Tartt |
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d76d031
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At her tone, at once intimate and formal, a terrible sadness came over me, and when we looked at each other it seemed that the whole past was redefined and brought into focus by this moment, clear as glass, a complexity of stillness that was rainy afternoons in spring, a dark chair in the hallway, the light-as-air touch of her hand on the back of my head. "I'm"
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Donna Tartt |
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I often thought how peculiar my life must look to someone reading those letters, far away.
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Donna Tartt |
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After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great,' he said. 'To escape the cognitive mode of experience, to transcend the accident to one's moment of being. There are other advantages, more difficult to speak of, things which ancient sources only hint at and which I myself only understood after the fact.
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Donna Tartt |
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4cebaa9
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Und bei diesem strammen kleinen Portrat ist es nicht schwer, das Menschliche in dem Finken zu sehen. Wurdevoll, verwundbar. Ein Gefangener, der einen anderen anschaut.
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Donna Tartt |
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597305e
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It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment then for what is was; I suppose we never do.
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Donna Tartt |
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795a852
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For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.
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poetry
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Donna Tartt |
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8ca8f83
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it felt like the waking-up moment between dream and daylight where everything merged and mingled just as it was about to change, all in the same, fluid, euphoric slide:
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Donna Tartt |
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73ceb87
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I like the idea of living in a city - any city, especially a strange one - like 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? Meals alone, waling the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.
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Donna Tartt |
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423dab4
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I sometimes get the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture.
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Donna Tartt |
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2036c51
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I was wide awake, and yet part of me was so glassed-off and numb I was practically in a coma.
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Donna Tartt |
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1e7bc88
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And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate.
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Donna Tartt |
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4a707c0
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I was jarred - a little spooked as well - at so blatant a reference to something referred to, by mutual agreement, almost exclusively with codes, catchwords, a hundred different euphemisms. "It was the most important night of my life," he said calmly. "It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most." "Which is?" "To live without thinking."
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Donna Tartt |
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6207130
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The light of long ago is different from the light of today, and yet here, in this house, I'm reminded of the past at every turn.
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Donna Tartt |
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won't last, it's
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Donna Tartt |
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They were a pair of white mice, I thought--only Kitsey was a spun-sugar, fairy-princess mouse whereas Andy was more the kind of luckless, anemic, pet-shop mouse you might feed to your boa constrictor. "Get"
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Donna Tartt |
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0e1e789
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furniture polish: 16 parts beeswax, 4 parts resin, 1 part Venice turpentine,
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Donna Tartt |
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82ae4a9
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CHAPTER 3
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Donna Tartt |
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8827ed6
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Y eso es lo que hacen todos los grandes maestros. Rembrandt. Velazquez. Lo ultimo de Tiziano. Construyen la ilusion, el truco..., pero te acercas un paso mas y se desintegra en pinceladas. Abstracto, como de otro mundo. Una clase de belleza totalmente diferente y mucho mas profunda. Es y no es.
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Donna Tartt |
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All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her.
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Donna Tartt |
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bda5041
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Tenemos el arte para no morir de la verdad. NIETZSCHE
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Donna Tartt |
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Nitric acid. Lampblack. Furniture, like all living things, acquired marks and scars over the course of time. The effects of time, visible and invisible.
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Donna Tartt |
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other means) claiming to Hobie that I'd already sold the
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Donna Tartt |
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21a48a0
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dingbat,
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Donna Tartt |
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f96b077
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The line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox a hundred times. [...] You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.' Still 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..
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beauty
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Donna Tartt |
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fce0f16
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we all jumped--a cab with its light on skidded across the lane to us, throwing up a fan of sewer-smelling water. "Watch it!" said Goldie, leaping aside as the taxi plowed to a stop--and then observing that my mother had no umbrella. "Wait," he said, starting into the lobby, to the collection of lost and forgotten umbrellas that he saved in a brass can by the fireplace and re-distributed on rainy days. "No," my mother called, fishing in her ..
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Donna Tartt |
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4bca6c8
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Boris shrugged. "Who cares? If he is good to you? None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?"
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Donna Tartt |
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c7835fe
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The line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox machine a hundred times. [...] You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.' Still 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 ..
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beauty
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Donna Tartt |
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71ceae0
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fact it seemed we had been doing things, such as stringing necklaces of rainbow-colored candy while the radio played Belle and Sebastian
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Donna Tartt |
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80c2504
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Maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.
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Donna Tartt |
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never the way it seems--all good, all bad.
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Donna Tartt |
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b245148
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No. Americans just persecute smaller countries that believe different from them.
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Donna Tartt |
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9971205
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No second chances.
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Donna Tartt |
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14c070e
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Starched shirts and suits fresh from the cleaners' went a long, long way toward hiding a multitude of sins.
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Donna Tartt |
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71b8964
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First things first: find my
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Donna Tartt |
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29d2fb9
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enough to show the black
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Donna Tartt |
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doesn't always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result from bad, does it? Even the wise and good cannot see the end of all actions.
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Donna Tartt |