Donna Tartt

Yet 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.

I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn__ want to see.

And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street.

Though 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.

The 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...

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 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.

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.

I think this goes more to the idea of 'relentless irony' than 'divine providence.

But Robin: their dear little Robs. More than ten years later, his death remained an agony; there was no glossing any detail; its horror was not subject to repair or permutation by any of the narrative devices that the Cleves knew. And__ince this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form__he memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirrorshards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, the creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring light.

...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.

It's a terrible thing, what we did,_ said Francis abruptly. __ mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It__ a shame. I feel bad about it.

It's a terrible thing, what we did,_ said Francis abruptly. __ mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It__ a shame. I feel bad about it.___ell, of course, I do too,_ said Henry matter-of-factly. __ut not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.__rancis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. __o,_ he said. __ot that bad.

Asparagus is in season.

The idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything.

And 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.

And 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.

You'd be surprised, Theo." she said, leaning back in her shawl-shaped chair, "what small, everyday things can lift us out of despair. But nobody can do it for you. You're the one who has to watch for the open door.