|
5e85e59
|
The walls billowed with printed fabric--yellow, green, indigo, purple--and a red hammer-and-sickle flag hung over the batik-draped mattress. It was as if a Russian cosmonaut had crashed in the jungle and fashioned himself a shelter of his nation's flag and whatever native sarongs and textiles he could find.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
d8ffad9
|
And-since this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form-the memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirror-shards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, the creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring light.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
85cfb89
|
My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong-but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
11b32b5
|
Anyways, the secret is, always fix their attention *away* from where the slippery stuff's going on. That's the first law of magic, Specs. Misdirection. Never forget it.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
94df655
|
In New York, everything reminded me of my mother--every taxi, every street corner, every cloud that passed over the sun--but out in this hot mineral emptiness, it was as if she had never existed; I could not even imagine her spirit looking down on me. All trace of her seemed burned away in the thin desert air.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
bb44406
|
This is the East Coast, boy. I know they're pretty laissez-faire about dress in your neck of the woods, but back here 52. they don't let you run around in your bathing suit all year long. Blacks and blues, that's the ticket, blacks and blues... (Bunny Corcoran to Richard Papen)
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
e5ee91a
|
La morte e la madre della bellezza" disse Henry. "E cos'e la bellezza?" "Terrore." "Ben detto!" esclamo Julian. "La bellezza e raramente dolce o consolatoria. Quasi l'opposto. La vera bellezza e sempre un po' inquietante." Guardai Camilla, il suo volto risplendente al sole, e pensai a quel verso dell'"Iliade" che amo tanto, su Pallade Atene e i suoi terribili occhi sfavillanti. "E se bellezza e terrore," prosegui Julian, "cos'e allora il de..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
86adee0
|
the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
2823fd6
|
War? One can lose oneself in the joy of battle, in fighting for a glorious cause, but there are not many glorious causes for which to fight these days.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
89f5be2
|
He was the kind of man people liked to entrust with their sadnesses.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
390fe55
|
It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
de05a0c
|
That surge of power and delight, of confidence, of control. That sudden sense of the richness of the world. Its infinite possibility.
|
|
control
possibility
power
|
Donna Tartt |
|
d9daf36
|
art] those images that strike the heart and set it blooming like a flower, images that open up some much, much larger beauty that you can spend your whole life looking for and never find.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
f13c208
|
It was a myth you couldn't function on opiates: shooting up was one thing but for someone like me-jumping at pigeons beating from the sidewalk, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder practically to the point of spasticity and cerebral palsy-pills were the key to being not only competent, but high-functioning.
|
|
anxiety-attack
competence
dread
drug-addiction
functioning
myth
opiates
ptsd
|
Donna Tartt |
|
20412a4
|
And, increasingly, I find myself fixing on that refusal to pull back. 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. Forget all this ridiculous 'O..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
3a10add
|
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..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
914e880
|
Only it was complicated, she wasn't thinking only of herself but me too, since we'd both been through so many of the same things, she and I, and we were an awful lot alike--too much. And because we'd both been hurt so badly, so early on, in violent and irremediable ways that most people didn't, and couldn't, understand, wasn't it a bit... precarious? A matter of self-preservation? Two rickety and death-driven persons who would need to lean ..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
d87a81b
|
What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all that blandly held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straigh..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
2dbb55e
|
Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise ..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
6f10818
|
I saw her reflection behind me, in the mirror. I was speechless. Somehow I knew I wasn't allowed to turn around--it was against the rules, whatever the rules of the place were--but we could see each other, our eyes could meet in the mirror, and she was just as glad to see me as I was to see her. She was herself. An embodied presence. There was psychic reality to her, there was depth and information. She was between me and whatever place she..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
1c53e99
|
Her gust of laughter had a self-propelling recklessness I knew all too well from wild nights with Boris, an edge of giddiness and hysteria that I associated (in myself, anyway) with having narrowly missed death. There had been nights in the desert where I was so sick with laughter, convulsed and doubled over with aching stomach for hours on end, I would happily have thrown myself in front of a car to make it stop.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
4e4f9c9
|
A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth," Edie said. "The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own character. Well, of course, that won't do. That would mean having to assume some responsibility for his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he'd much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way."
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
ebda3aa
|
And the strange thing was: I knew that most people didn't see her as I did--if anything, found her a bit odd-looking wth her off-kilter walk and her spooky redhead pallor. For whatever dumb reason I had always flattered myself that I was the only person in the world who really appreciated her--that she would be shocked and touched and maybe even come to view herself in a whole new light if she knew just how beautiful I found her. But this h..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
53da23e
|
This whole town is like a big Fuck You to Thoreau.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
33912bf
|
Why, I thought sadly, as he returned with his topcoat over his arm, why hadn't my mother married someone like him--? Or Mr. Bracegirdle? somebody she actually had something in common with--older maybe but personable, someone who enjoyed galleries and string quartets and poking around used book stores, someone attentive, cultivated, kind? Who would have appreciated her, and bought her pretty clothes and taken her to Paris for her birthday, a..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
d302d1a
|
Horrific as it was, the present dark, I was afraid to leave it for the other, permanent dark - jelly and bloat, the muddy pit. I had seen the shadow of it on Bunny's face - stupid terror; the whole world opening upside down; his life exploding in a thunder of crows and the sky expanding empty over his stomach like a white ocean. Then nothing. Rotten stumps, sowbugs crawling in the fallen leaves. Dirt and dark.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
cfc9e4c
|
I waited for him to pick up the thread again--and when he didn't, we sat there peacefully, while I sipped my cooling tea (Lapsang Souchong, smoky and peculiar) and felt the strangeness of my life, and where I was.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
e3159f0
|
But he knew absolutely everything--work that other people didn't know how to do or care to learn anymore--it hangs by a thread, this trade, generation to generation.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
476e01c
|
beauty alters the grain of reality
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
af0795b
|
And though there was something pathetic about it--taking comfort in her left-behind things like a puppy snuggled in an old coat...
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
5d7f451
|
And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.
|
|
laughter
mothers
|
Donna Tartt |
|
4b2cb90
|
We don't like to admit it," said Julian, "but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything. All truly civilized people - the ancients no less than us - have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks and the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are ..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
48000e3
|
Well, you know what Julian would say,' said Francis. 'There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
ed95039
|
But the moon was so large and clear through the uncurtained window that it made me think instead of a story my mother had told me, about driving to horse shows with her mother and father in the back seat of their old Buick when she was little. "It was a lot of travelling--ten hours sometimes through hard country. Ferris wheels, rodeo rings with sawdust, everything smelled like popcorn and horse manure. One night we were in San Antonio, and ..
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
74ef9db
|
She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose white scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze;
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
d8e1e13
|
had I stayed in California I might have ended up in a cult or at the very least practicing some weird dietary restriction.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
4663f26
|
He was a marvelous talker, a magical talker, and I wish I were able to give a better idea what he said, but it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to render the speech of a superior one
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
f3b3d28
|
And isn't the whole point of things--beautiful things--that they connect you to some larger beauty?
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
b110eb9
|
And it's a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves, to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But that is a mistake.
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
9500f91
|
The lamplight was eerie, and, standing there motionless in our bathrobes, sleepy, with shadows flickering all around, I felt as though I had woken from one dream into an even more remote one, some bizarre wartime bomb shelter of the unconscious.
|
|
descriptive
donna-tartt
dream-within-a-dream
dreams
eerie
the-secret-history
|
Donna Tartt |
|
83bd5f2
|
Hobie]"Theo." His hug was strong and parental, and so fierce that it made me cry even harder. Then his hand was on my shoulder, heavy anchoring hand that was security and authority itself; he was leading me in, into the workshop, dim gilt and rich wood smells I'd dreamed of, up the stairs into the long-lost parlor, with its velvets and urns and bronzes."
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
214c1fe
|
Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room-the pool table, snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost's, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.
|
|
literature-quotes
the-secret-history
|
Donna Tartt |
|
178aea2
|
It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to lose control completely? To throw off all the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?
|
|
|
Donna Tartt |
|
046c335
|
I slept all day, face down in the pillow, a comfortable dead-man's float only remotely disturbed by a chill undertow of reality--talk, footsteps, slamming doors--which threaded fitfully through the dark, blood-warm waters of dream.
|
|
donna-tartt
figurative-language
the-secret-history
|
Donna Tartt |