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fe73466
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I had to say goodbye to her once before, but it took everything I had to say goodbye to her then, again, for the last time, like poor Orpheus turning for a last backwards glance at the ghost of his only love and in the same heartbeat losing her forever: hinc illae lacrimae, hence those tears.
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Donna Tartt |
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f9beab1
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It was an obscure specialization, but the candlelit and treacherous universe in which they moved - of sin unpunished, of innocence destroyed - was one I found appealing. Even the titles of their plays were strangely seductive, trapdoors to something beautiful and wicked that trickled beneath the surface of mortality: The Malcontent. The White Devil. The Broken Heart.
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Donna Tartt |
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556259c
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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.
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Donna Tartt |
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b01dfb0
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How Robin would have loved this!' the aunts used to say fondly. 'How Robin would have laughed!' In truth, Robin had been a giddy, fickle child - somber at odd moments, practically hysterical at others - and in life, this unpredictability had been a great part of his charm. But his younger sisters, who had never in any proper sense known him at all, nonetheless grew up certain of their dead brother's favorite color (red); his favorite book (..
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Donna Tartt |
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39d454f
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He did touch people's lives, the lives of strangers, in an entirely unanticipated way. It was they who really mourned him - or what they thought was him - with a grief that was no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.
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Donna Tartt |
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c5201a6
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I felt my heart limping in my chest, and was revolted by it, a pitiful muscle, sick and bloody, pulsing against my ribs.
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Donna Tartt |
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dea2db3
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Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn't be an object. It'd be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.
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Donna Tartt |
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1dd1a4a
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glared at Danny with her wolfish eyes, and
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Donna Tartt |
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cac8309
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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.
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Donna Tartt |
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6356408
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Si sper ca exista aici si un adevar mai mare despre suferinta, sau cel putin despre felul cum o inteleg eu - desi am ajuns sa-mi dau seama ca singurele adevaruri care conteaza pentru mine sunt cele pe care nu le inteleg si nu le pot intelege. Ceea ce e misterios, ambiguu, inexplicabil. Ceea ce nu poate fi inchis intr-o poveste, nu are o poveste. O sclipire de lumina pe un lant abia schitat. Un petic de lumina solara pe un perete galben. Sin..
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Donna Tartt |
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f1e3628
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It was nothing I hadn't thought of, plenty, and in far less taxing circumstances; the urge shook me grandly and unpredictably, a poisonous whisper that never wholly left me, that on some days lingered just on the threshold of my hearing but on others roared up uncontrollably into a sort of lurid visionary frenzy, why I wasn't sure, sometimes even a bad movie or a gruesome dinner party could trigger it, short term boredom and long term pain,..
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Donna Tartt |
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a9ce81e
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And yet (this was the murky part, this was what bothered me) there had also been other, way more confusing and fucked-up nights, grappling around half-dressed, weak light sliding in from the bathroom and everything haloed and unstable without my glasses: hands on each other, rough and fast, kicked-over beers foaming on the carpet - fun and not that big of a deal when it was actually happening, more than worth it for the sharp gasp when my e..
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Donna Tartt |
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a0c401b
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In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly, unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June. Toward the fringe of the wood, the young trees were yellow with the first tinge of new leaves; woodpeckers laughed and drummed in the copses and, lying in bed with my window open, I could hear the rush and gurgle of the melted snow..
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joy
spring
weather
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Donna Tartt |
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569ddc3
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No--" his hands came together on the table--"it was one of the first antiques I ever bought, thirty years ago. In an American Folk sale. I'm not a great one for the folk art, never have been--this piece, not of the first quality, doesn't fit with anything else I own, and yet isn't it always the inappropriate thing, the thing that doesn't quite work, that's oddly the dearest?"
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Donna Tartt |
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1f5b335
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relief,
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Donna Tartt |
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7d9dcee
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But now, at news of his death, people was strangely frantic. Everyone suddenly had know him. Everyone was deranged with grief. Everyone was just gonna have to trying to get on as well as they could whiteout him. "He would have wanted it that way" That was a phrase i heard many times that week on the lips of people who had absolutely no idea what Bunny wanted."
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Donna Tartt |
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64236e9
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Viewed close: a freckled hand against a black coat, an origami frog tipped over on its side. Step away, and the illusion snaps in again: life-more-than-life, never-dying. Pippa herself is the play between those things, both love and not-love, there and not-there. Photographs on the wall, a balled-up sock under the sofa. The moment where I reached to brush a piece of fluff from her hair and she laughed and ducked at my touch. And just as mus..
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Donna Tartt |
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4e06ffa
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Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only -- if you take care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things -- beautiful things -- that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean -- mending old things, preserving them, looking ..
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Donna Tartt |
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0b64b47
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They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover--because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he'd chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an i..
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Donna Tartt |
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478d952
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Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only-if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things-beautiful things-that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?
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Donna Tartt |
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c3d8e66
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They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover -- because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he'd chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an..
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Donna Tartt |
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762d7ff
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steep taper, seven day timetable, plenty of loperamide; magnesium supplements and free form amino acids to replenish my burnt-out neurotransmitters; protein powder, electrolyte powder, melatonin (and weed) for sleep as well as various herbal tinctures and potions my fashion intern swore by, licorice root and milk thistle, nettles and hops and black cumin seed oil, valerian root and skullcap extract. I had a shopping bag from the health food..
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Donna Tartt |
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c544a48
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Ma dopotutto non e sempre l'elemento fuori posto, quello che non funziona alla perfezione, che stranamente finiamo per amare di piu?
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Donna Tartt |
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88d5ec7
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Penso a cio che mi disse Hobie: la bellezza cambia la venatura della realta. E continuo a pensare anche a una verita piu convenzionale: ovvero, che la ricerca della bellezza pura e una trappola, una scorciatoia per l'amarezza e il dolore, che la bellezza dev'essere sempre associata a qualcosa di piu profondo. Ma cos'e quel qualcosa? Perche sono fatto cosi? Perche tengo alle cose sbagliate, e non mi curo di quelle giuste? O, per metterla in ..
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Donna Tartt |
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f45a9f0
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Non possiamo scegliere cosa vogliamo e cosa non vogliamo e questa e la verita nuda e cruda. Non possiamo scappare da cio che siamo. [...] E per quanto mi piacerebbe credere che ci sia una verita dietro l'illusione, mi sono convinto che non c'e alcuna verita dietro l'illusione. Perche, tra la "realta" da un lato, e il punto in cui la mente va a sbattere contro la realta, esiste uno spazio sottile, uno spicchio d'arcobaleno da cui origina la ..
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Donna Tartt |
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c6c437c
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But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the g..
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Donna Tartt |
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ecf66ff
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Il quadro mi ha anche insegnato che possiamo comunicare l'un l'altro a distanza di secoli. E sento di avere qualcosa di molto serio e urgente da dirti, mio inesistente lettore, e sento che devo dirtelo immediatamente come se ci trovassimo nella stessa stanza. Che la vita - qualunque cosa sia - e breve. Che il destino e crudele ma forse non casuale. Che la Natura (intesa come Morte) vince sempre, ma questo non significa che dobbiamo inchinar..
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Donna Tartt |
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1c4faa9
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I don't want you to help me.' She raised her head and looked at me: her gaze hit me hard and sweet as a shot of morphine.
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Donna Tartt |
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1341c08
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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?
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Donna Tartt |
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930dfdf
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would.
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Donna Tartt |
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b995e9d
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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. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you t
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Donna Tartt |
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2370fd0
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As is true of most incipient bad things in life, i had not really prepared myself for this possibility.
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Donna Tartt |
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7003119
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The value of Greek prose composition, he said, [was that] if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in E..
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Donna Tartt |
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3966d43
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It has always been hard for me to talk about Julian without romanticizing him. In many ways, I loved him the most of all;and it is with him that i am most tempted to embroider, to flatter, to basically reinvent. I think that is because Julian himself was constantly in the process of reinventing people and events around him, conferring kindness, or wisdom, or bravery, or charm, on actions which contained nothing of the sort. It was one of th..
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Donna Tartt |
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878c34a
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Andy had been good to me when I had no one else. The least I could do was be kind to his mother and sister. It didn't occur to me then, though it certainly does now, that it was years since I'd roused myself from my stupor of misery and self-absorption; between anomie and trance, inertia and parenthesis and gnawing my own heart out, there were a lot of small, easy, everyday kindnesses I'd missed out on; and even the word kindness was like r..
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Donna Tartt |
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9aeb3a5
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In high school I developed a habit of wandering through shopping malls after school, swaying through the bright, chill mezzanines until I was so dazed with consumer goods and product codes, with promenades and escalators, with mirrors and Muzak and noise and light, that a fuse would blow in my brain and all at once everything would become unintelligible: color without form, a babble of detached molecules. Then I would walk like a zombie to ..
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feelings
inspirational
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Donna Tartt |
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020a530
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Un acte qui nous prouverait, ainsi qu'a lui-meme, qu'il etait reellement possible de mettre en oeuvre les principes eleves que nous avait enseignes Julian. Je me rappelle son reflet dans le miroir alors qu'il levait le revolver vers sa tete. Il avait une expression de concentration extatique, presque de triomphe, celle d'un plongeur de haut vol courant a l'extremite du tremplin : joyeux, les yeux fermes, dans l'attente du grand plongeon.
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Donna Tartt |
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fd37ae3
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It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we shiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?
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Donna Tartt |
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72d9674
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The months subsequent were an endless dreary battle of paperwork, full of stalemates, fought in trenches.
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Donna Tartt |
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dee08aa
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Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable.
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Donna Tartt |
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61a9e16
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the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.
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Donna Tartt |
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f6d49a5
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I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head.
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Donna Tartt |
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ecf19e4
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That's odd,' said Henry. 'The first thing I thought of when I tasted that coffee was you.
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Donna Tartt |
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26251f9
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Took
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Donna Tartt |