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7e3fdc5
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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
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Donna Tartt |
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fb458b5
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Una cosa era ver un cuadro en un museo, pero contemplarlo bajo todas esas luces, estados animicos y estaciones diferentes era apreciarlo de mil formas distintas; guardarlo encerrado en la oscuridad --un objeto hecho de luz, que solo vivia en la luz-- no estaba bien por muchas razones que no sabria explicar.
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cuadros
pintura
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Donna Tartt |
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362e72f
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The painting had made me feel less mortal, less ordinary. It was support and vindication; it was sustenance and sum. It was the keystone that had held the whole cathedral up.
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Donna Tartt |
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21b2987
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Running along the back wall was a long glass trophy case filled with loving cups, ribbons, school and sports memorabilia; in ominous proximity were several large funeral wreaths which, in conjunction with the trophies, gave that corner of the room a Kentucky Derby sort of look.
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Donna Tartt |
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e7b4f09
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Over and over again, Harriet read the story about Lazarus in the Bible, but it refused to address even the most basic questions. What had Lazarus to say to Jesus and his sisters about his week in the grave? Did he still smell? Was he able to go back home and carry on living with his sisters, or was he frightening to the people around him and perhaps had to go off somewhere and live by himself like Frankenstein's monster? She could not help ..
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humor
resurrection
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Donna Tartt |
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9bdbe21
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Itching, itching. Skin on fire. Nausea and splitting headache. The more sumptuous the dope, the deeper the anguish--mental and physical--when it wore off. I was back to the chunk spewing out of Martin's forehead only on a more intimate level, inside it almost, every pulse and spurt, and--even worse, a deeper freezing point entirely--the painting, gone. Bloodstained coat, the feet of the running-away kid. Blackout. Disaster. For humans--trap..
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Donna Tartt |
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b6a485c
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Unsettled heart. The fetishism of secrecy. These people understood--as I did--the back alleys of the soul, whispers and shadows, money slipping from hand to hand, the password, the code, the second self, all the hidden consolations that lifted life above the ordinary and made it worth living.
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Donna Tartt |
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cc1d22c
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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. 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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efa403c
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I kak by ni khotel ia verit' v to, za illiuziiami kroetsia istina, ia v kontse kontsov ponial, chto za illiuziiami nikakoi istiny net. Potomu chto mezhdu "real'nost'iu" s odnoi storony i tochkoi, v kotoroi real'nost' i razum skhodiatsia, sushchestvuet nekaia promezhutochnaia zona, perelivchatyi krai, gde ozhivaet krasota, gde dve sovershenno raznye poverkhnosti slivaiutsia, otlavlivaiutsia i dariat nam to, chego ne mozhet nam dat' zhizn': v..
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Donna Tartt |
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d94f7d7
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The stray chance that might, or might not, change everything.
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Donna Tartt |
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8c725ab
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No bol'she vsego ia radovalsia, chto v etom neprivychnom dlia menia razgovorchivo-govorlivom sostoianii ia sderzhalsia i ne sboltnul to, chto sidelo u menia na samom konchike iazyka, to, chego ia nikogda ne govoril, khot' my oba vse i tak znali i mne v obshchem-to i ne nuzhno bylo govorit' emu eto tam, na ulitse, vslukh -- ia liubliu tebia, razumeetsia.
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Donna Tartt |
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af75838
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is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons. --SCHILLER
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Donna Tartt |
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be42652
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Um--" I turned to the shop window to compose myself, and my transparent ghost turned to meet me, crowds passing behind me in the glass."
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Donna Tartt |
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fc53fd8
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Another thing I figured out, after a few days in the house on Desert End Road: what Xandra and my dad really meant when they said my dad had "stopped drinking" was that he'd switched from Scotch (his beverage of choice) to Corona Lights and Vicodin."
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Donna Tartt |
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819e8de
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Together, they were like one of those superhero alliances in the comic books, invincible, an unconquerable confederation of boredom and confusion.
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Donna Tartt |
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03e7a2e
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Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life--a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple--the painter is giving you a secret message. 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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8576fd9
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My dad at the baccarat table, in the air-conditioned midnight. There's always more to things, a hidden level. Luck in its darker moods and manifestations. Consulting the stars, waiting to make the big bets when Mercury was in retrograde, reaching for a knowledge just beyond the known. Black his lucky color, nine his lucky number. Hit me again pal. There's a pattern and we're a part of it. Yet if you scratched very deep at that idea of patte..
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Donna Tartt |
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1440f58
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He was, like me, an only child. His father (born in Siberia, a Ukrainian national from Novoagansk) was in mining and exploration. "Big important job--he travels the world." Boris's mother--his father's second wife--was dead."
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Donna Tartt |
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9665f4e
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The twilights out there were florid and melodramatic, great sweeps of orange and crimson and Lawrence-in-the-desert vermilion, then night dropping dark and hard like a slammed door.
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Donna Tartt |
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46b2728
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I stood in the shadiest corner I could find with my mass-market paperback and, with a red pencil, went through and underlined a lot of particularly bracing sentences: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." "A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind." What would Thoreau have made of Las Vegas: its lights and rackets, its trash and daydreams, its projections a..
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Donna Tartt |
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1584cec
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because the thing he hadn't understood then (he was happier not knowing it) was that once you were in prison, you never got out. People treated you like a different person; you tended to backslide, the way people tended to backslide into malaria or bad alcoholism
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Donna Tartt |
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82b0c5f
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he had an indefinable look of privilege gone wrong,
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Donna Tartt |
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59867e1
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E per quanto mi piacerebbe credere che ci sia un verita dietro l'illusione, mi sono convinto che non c'e alcuna verita dietro l'illusione. Perche, tra la "relata" 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 bellezza, il punto in cui due superfici molto diverse tra loro si mescolano e si confondono per procurare cio che la vita non ci da: e ques..
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modern-classic
the-goldfinch
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Donna Tartt |
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ca31986
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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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74ac2e5
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it seemed that the whole past was redefined and brought into focus by this moment,
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Donna Tartt |
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1b5c49e
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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.
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Donna Tartt |