626 Quotes by Donna Tartt

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial.

I am gifted at blending myself into any given milieu – you’ve never seen such a typical California teenager as I was, nor such a dissolute and callous pre-med student – but somehow despite my efforts, I am never able to blend myself in entirely and remain in some respects quite distinct from my surroundings, in the same way that a green chameleon remains a distinct entity from the leaf upon which it sits, no matter how perfectly it has approximated the the subtleties of the particular shade.

Forgive me for for all the things that i did, but mostly for all the things i didn’t do.

When she went back to the telephone Hely’s breath, on the other end, was ragged and secretive.

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?

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.

But even that day, there on the porch, with Charles beside me and the smell of wood smoke in the air, it had the quality of a memory; there it was, before my eyes, and yet too beautiful to believe.

We stood looking at each other. It was raining. She looked at me with her rain-colored eyes.

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, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they’ve been duped by the same pair of eyes.