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. Its 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.”

“Mais, vrai, J'ai trop pleure! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I'd always hoped that someday I'd be able to use it.”

“It was heart-shaking. Glorious. Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and w...”

“The dead appear to us in dreams because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star...”

“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.”

“People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didnt want to see.”

“I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.”

“Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment.”

“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 its 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...”

“Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.”

“But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.”

“It seemed my wholelife was composed of these disjointedfractions of time, hanging around in onepublic place and then another, as if I werewaiting for trains that never came. And, likeone of those g...”

“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.”