626 Quotes by Donna Tartt

Well, the Dutch invented the microscope,” she said. “They were jewelers, grinders of lenses. They want it all as detailed as possible because even the tiniest things mean something.

No. I’ve always been drawn to broken, wild terrain. The oddest tongues come from such places, and the strangest mythologies, and the oldest cities, and the most barbarous religions.

Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

I remember a story I read once, a soldier, was it at Shiloh? He was talking to me but not with his whole attention. Gettysburg? a soldier so mad with shock that he started burying birds and squirrels on the battlefield. You had lot of little things killed too, in the crossfire, little animals. Many tiny graves. p128.

Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet – for me, anyway – all that’s worth living for lies in that charm?

I met her my first year of college, and was initially attracted to her because she seemed an intelligent, brooding malcontent like myself; but after about a month, during which time she’d firmly glued herself to me, I began to realize, with some little horror, that she was nothing more than a lowbrow, pop-psychology version of Sylvia Plath.

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial. It is not that your Julian chooses solely to concentrate on certain, exalted things; it is that he chooses to ignore others equally as important.

But, if I dare say it, it wasn’t until I had helped kill a man that I realized how elusive and complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.

Colors so bright, they nearly broke my heart.