Quotes by Donna Tartt

“their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be”

“I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that ...”

“Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, p...”

“A different and much deeper sort of beauty altogether. The thing and yet not the thing.”

“Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful? he said. Its a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whateve...”

“The vitality of the act was entirely obfuscated, the beauty, the terror, the sacrifice.' He took one last drag of this cigarette and put it out. 'Quite simply,' he said, 'we didn't believe. And bel...”

“The little white bundletoddling dutifully down the hall to the front doorfroze. Then a high-pitched scream as he began to run as fast as he could (which was not very fast at all, any more) and Bori...”

“Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?”

“And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?"If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.”

“But does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end-and yet to know as well, despite all thi...”

“...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.”

“Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and ...”

“Do you have any idea why you might be feeling better?No, not really, I said curtly. Better wasnt even the word for how I felt. There wasnt a word for it. It was more that things too small to mentio...”

“I hated being around people, couldnt pay attention to what anyone was saying, couldnt talk to clients, couldnt tag my pieces, couldnt ride the subway, human activity seemed pointless, incomprehensi...”

“Great paintingspeople flock to see them, they draw crowds, theyre reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a life...”

“[T]hough the darkness sometimes lifted just enough so I could construe my surroundings, familiar shapes solidifying like bedroom furniture at dawn, my relief was never more than temporary because s...”

“Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist.”

“What do you think about America?""Everyone always smiles so big! Wellmost people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid.”

“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 c...”

“Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so?' he said, looking round the table. 'Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls -...”