626 Quotes by Donna Tartt

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself?

We don't like to admit it," said Julian, "but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than anything. All truly civilized people - the ancients no less than us - have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks and the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?

Are you always up this early?' I asked him.'Almost always,' he said without looking up. 'It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

His warmth, which seemed to presume upon some happy old intimacy we did not share, had thrown me into awkwardness.

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

In Paradise Lost he pushes English to its very limits but I think no language without noun cases could possibly support the structural order he attempts to impose.

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.

It’s crazy,” she’d said, “but I’d be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can’t think of a better way to go insane.

And what does a person with such a romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics? He asked this as if, having had the good fortune to catch such a rare bird as myself, he was anxious to extract my opinion while I was still captive in his office.'If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective,' I said, 'I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.'He laughed. 'The great romantics are often failed classicists. But that's beside the point, isn't it?