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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| aa7786f | But then finally we had to go inside and almost the instant we did the spell was broken, and in the brightness of the hallway we were embarrassed and stiff with each other, almost as if the house lights had been turned up at the end of a play, and all our closeness exposed for what it was: make-believe. For months I had been desperate to recapture that moment; and-in the bar, for an hour or two - I had. But it was all unreal again, we were .. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 5f53acd | On game day, until five o'clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom--autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day--but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shado.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| c18b022 | Wedding Obergruppenfuhrer | Donna Tartt | ||
| aa51add | still when I lost her I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, | Donna Tartt | ||
| 289de4f | It kept being a shock every time I remembered it, a fresh slap: she was gone. Every new event--everything I did for the rest of my life--would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away. | Donna Tartt | ||
| b34c33b | Certainly I would be less frightened of death (not just my own death but Welty's death, Andy's death, Death in general) if I thought a familiar person came to meet us at the door, because--writing this now, I'm close to tears--I think how poor Andy told me, with terror on his face, that my mother was the only person he'd known, and liked, who'd ever died. So--maybe when Andy washed up spitting and coughing into the country on the far side o.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 24aebaf | At one time I had liked the idea, that the act, at least, had bound us together; we were not ordinary friends, but friends till-death-do-us-part. This thought had been my only comfort in the aftermath of Bunny's death. Now it made me sick, knowing there was no way out. I was stuck with them, with all of them, for good. | Donna Tartt | ||
| d6559fe | I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn't fit into a story, what doesn't have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other | Donna Tartt | ||
| 850f7ee | and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty--a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 4f1f0e1 | Fate's way of beating us in a fair fight is to give us warnings that we hear, but never heed. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| f424157 | It was not by dialectic that it pleased God to save His people. | Ambrose | ||
| 5cfc97b | They want it all as detailed as possible because even the tiniest things mean something. 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 .. | Donna Tartt | ||
| e008e6a | Navernoe, kogda udaetsia spasti khot' chto-to ot khoda istorii, eto uzhe samo po sebe chudo. Vokrug menia, mimo menia - dom zhil svoei zhizn'iu. mne bylo naplevat', chto eto tam za muzyka. Ia slushal eio tol'ko iz-za dozhdlivogo sveta, belogo dereva za oknom, raskatov groma, Pippy. Kak zhe menia zaneslo v etu strannuiu novuiu zhizn', gde po nocham orut p'ianye inostrantsy, a ia khozhu v griaznoi odezhde i nikto menia ne liubit? Razvratnyi u.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| d56167f | Inogda, chtoby poniat' tselyi mir, nuzhno sosredotochit'sia na samoi krokhotnoi ego chasti, pristal'no vgliadyvat'sia v to, chto nakhoditsia riadom s toboi, poka ono ne zamenit tseloe; no s tekh samykh por, kak kartina ot menia uskol'znula, ia chuvstvoval, chto zakhlebyvaius' i propadaiu v bezgranichnosti - i ne tol'ko v poniatnoi bezgranichnosti vremeni i prostranstva, no i v nepreodolimykh rasstoianiiakh mezhdu liud'mi, dazhe kogda do nik.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 75350ef | And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life--whatever else it is--is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves a.. | goldfinch theo | Donna Tartt | |
| 544d158 | Things would have turned out better is she had lived. As it was, she died when I was kid;and thought everything that happened to me since then is thoroughly my own fault, still when I lost her I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life. | love mother the-goldfinch | Donna Tartt | |
| 21b544c | And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I had taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For I had thought that this last touchstone of the past, at least, would be where I'd left it. | grief home loss nostalgia | Donna Tartt | |
| 86e3992 | installed herself as Wedding Obergruppenfuhrer. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 1253af7 | 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? | Donna Tartt | ||
| 0a68502 | It was all very different from the crowded, complicated, and overly formal atmosphere of the Barbours', where everything was rehearsed and scheduled like a Broadway production, an airless perfection from which Andy had been in constant retreat, scuttling to his bedroom like a frightened squid. By contrast Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 0935d0b | BEFORE BORIS, I HAD borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 750c86e | only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. | Donna Tartt | ||
| bba609e | I felt I understood the secret grandeur of dying, all the knowledge held back from all humankind until the very end: | Donna Tartt | ||
| 3f9a542 | She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty--a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 7e3fdc5 | 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 | Donna Tartt | ||
| fb458b5 | 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. | cuadros pintura | Donna Tartt | |
| 362e72f | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 21b2987 | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| e7b4f09 | 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 .. | humor resurrection | Donna Tartt | |
| 9bdbe21 | 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.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| b6a485c | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| cc1d22c | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| efa403c | 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.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| d94f7d7 | The stray chance that might, or might not, change everything. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 8c725ab | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| af75838 | is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons. --SCHILLER | Donna Tartt | ||
| be42652 | 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." | Donna Tartt | ||
| fc53fd8 | 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." | Donna Tartt | ||
| 819e8de | Together, they were like one of those superhero alliances in the comic books, invincible, an unconquerable confederation of boredom and confusion. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 03e7a2e | 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 | Donna Tartt | ||
| 8576fd9 | 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.. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 1440f58 | 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." | Donna Tartt | ||
| 9665f4e | 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. | Donna Tartt | ||
| 46b2728 | 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.. | Donna Tartt |