“ There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial. Donna Tartt
“ Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter… Donna Tartt
“ The lamplight was eerie, and, standing there motionless in our bathrobes, sleepy, with shadows flickering all around, I felt as though I had woken from one dream into an even more remote one, some biz… Donna Tartt
“ 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 a… Donna Tartt
“ «Perché quella piccola voce ostinata nella nostra testa ci tormenta così?» disse , guardandoci. «Forse perché ci ricorda che siamo vivi, che siamo mortali, che abbiamo anime autonome - che, dopotutto,… Donna Tartt
“ The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all that desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things I'd never known. Donna Tartt
“ I slept all day, face down in the pillow, a comfortable dead-man's float only remotely disturbed by a chill undertow of reality—talk, footsteps, slamming doors—which threaded fitfully through the dark… Donna Tartt
“ Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist. Donna Tartt
“ I was confused by this sudden glare of attention; it was as if the characters in a favorite painting, absorbed in their own concerns, had looked up out of the canvas and spoken to me. Donna Tartt
“ But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that ravine forever on an April afternoon long ago, now I am… Donna Tartt
“ I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me. Donna Tartt
“ But one mustn't underestimate the primal appeal—to lose one's self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time. Donna Tartt
“ 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 wani… Donna Tartt
“ 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. Donna Tartt
“ Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture. Donna Tartt
“ 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. Donna Tartt
“ All of a sudden, images from every crime movie I'd ever seen began to pop into my mind—the windowless room, the harsh lights and narrow hallways, images which did not seem so much theatrical or foreig… Donna Tartt
