01c. 1963 ADAnd though it's a bleak thing to admit all these years later, still I've never met anyone who made me feel loved the way she did. Everything came alive in her company; she cast a charmed theatrical light about her so that to see anything through her eyes was to see it in brighter colors than ordinary.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
02c. 1963 ADAnd as much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn't turn around, that to look at her directly was to violate the laws of her world and mine; she had come to me the only way she could, and our eyes met in the glass for a long still moment; but just as she seemed about to speak - with what seemed a combination of amusement, affection, exasperation - a vapor rolled between us and I woke up.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
03c. 1963 ADThe idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
05c. 1963 ADIt'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.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
06c. 1963 ADIt'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.”“Well, of course, I do too,” said Henry matter-of-factly. “But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.”Francis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. “No,” he said. “Not that bad.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
07c. 1963 AD...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 from where a slant of sun had struck it while the other side was as dark as the day it was cut.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
08c. 1963 ADI think this goes more to the idea of 'relentless irony' than 'divine providence.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
09c. 1963 ADMais, 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.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
10c. 1963 ADIt 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 waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know. . . . Mean we think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it's not at all. Time is something which defies spring and water, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no 'I,' and yet it's not at all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hears in Eastern religions, the self being a drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It's more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of the self. You have no idea how pallid the workday boundaries of ordinary existence seem, after such an ecstasy.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
11c. 1963 ADThe 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...Donna Tartt / quote ↗
12c. 1963 ADThough 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 apparent way.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
13c. 1963 ADAnd her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
14c. 1963 ADPeople loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn’t want to see.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
15c. 1963 ADI suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
16c. 1963 ADYet 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.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
17c. 1963 ADMaybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
18c. 1963 ADAnd 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 across the sky - so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
19c. 1963 ADThey 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 down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record coverDonna Tartt / quote ↗
20c. 1963 ADIt 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 ghosts who are said to lingeraround depots late at night, askingpassersby for the timetable of the MidnightExpress that derailed twenty years before, Iwandered from light to light until thatdreaded hour when all the doors closed and,stepping from the world of warmth andpeople and conversation overheard, I feltthe old familiar cold twist through my bonesagain and then it was all forgotten, thewarmth, the lights; I had never been warmin my life, ever.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
21c. 1963 ADIt'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 possibly. I've seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?Donna Tartt / quote ↗
22c. 1963 AD. . . it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
23c. 1963 ADWade straight through life, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and heart open.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
24c. 1963 ADBut while I have never considered myself a very good person, neither can I bring myself to believe that I am spectacularly bad one. Perhaps it's simply impossible to think of oneself in such a way.Donna Tartt / quote ↗
