Quotes by Donna Tartt

“It's a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”

“...real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing here and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet...”

“I think this goes more to the idea of 'relentless irony' than 'divine providence.”

“Though I would have died rather than told anyone, I was worried my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily a...”

“And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.”

“Maybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in.”

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”

“And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color acr...”

“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 d...”

“It's not as if we're running a hospital for sick children down here, let's put it that way. Where's the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possib...”

“. . . it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.”

“For humans—trapped in biology—there was no mercy: we lived a while, we fussed around for a bit and died, we rotted in the ground like garbage.”

“I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back.But I wouldn’t say that. It was rosepetals I wanted to thro...”

“Over and over I played her favorite Arvo Pärt, as a way of being with her; and she had only to mention recently read novel for me to grab it up hungrily, to be inside her thoughts, a sort of telepathy”