Donna Tartt

“She was as cool as dammit.”

— Donna Tartt

“Safe trip. I love you. No kidding.”

— Donna Tartt

Beauty alters the grain of reality,

— Donna Tartt

“And what is beauty?” “Terror.”

— Donna Tartt

“All of the above.”

— Donna Tartt

“—No—wait. I’m coming back.”

— Donna Tartt

I really do work in solitude.

— Donna Tartt

“Beauty is terror.”

— Donna Tartt

“...it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.”

— Donna Tartt

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

— Donna Tartt

“I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”

— Donna Tartt

“By happy contrast, Hobie's whole day revolved around dinner.”

— Donna Tartt

“basketball courts ringed with barbed-wire fence.”

— Donna Tartt

“loose tendons; dance world's loss; performance art's gain”

— Donna Tartt

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

— Donna Tartt

No money, holes in my socks, living off oatmeal.

— Donna Tartt

And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of…

— Donna Tartt

“Hard to put things right. You don’t often get that chance. Sometimes all you can do is not get caught.”

— Donna Tartt

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

— Donna Tartt

“He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life.”

— Donna Tartt

“It’s a perfectly handy skill for any boy to know.” “Certainly it is, if he needs to hail a passing tugboat.”

— Donna Tartt

“She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief.”

— Donna Tartt

“But though it was the most resonant and real-seeming thing that had happened in a long time, I didn't want to spoil…

— Donna Tartt

“Maybe it’s stupid to even articulate such hopes. But, then again, maybe it’s more stupid not to.”

— Donna Tartt

They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in…

— Donna Tartt

“those guys who wore a wedding ring that didn’t really look like a wedding ring—or maybe it wasn’t a wedding ring at…

— Donna Tartt

“Even in some smoky post-catastrophe Manhattan you could imagine him swaying genially at the door in the rags of his former uniform,…

— Donna Tartt

Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer…

— Donna Tartt

“Another trick—calculated to lure a different, more sophisticated customer—was to bury a piece in the back of the store, reverse the vacuum…

— Donna Tartt

“Did she ever have the sense of observing herself from afar, as I often did, as if the explosion had knocked my…

— Donna Tartt

“Because it is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more…

— Donna Tartt

“You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same…

— Donna Tartt

“The lamplight was warm and the apartment still and snug. At home in bed, in my private abyss of longing, the scenes…

— Donna Tartt

“Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me than men had walked on the moon. “No,” he said, putting…

— Donna Tartt

Being the only female in what was basically a boys’ club must have been difficult for her. Miraculously, she didn’t compensate by…

— Donna Tartt

“And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it - although I've come to…

— Donna Tartt

“Because I don’t care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able…

— Donna Tartt

“Ida Rhew was bending low, pulling a pan of rolls from the oven. God, sang a cracking Negro voice from the transistor…

— Donna Tartt

“Where’s the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I’ve seen too…

— Donna Tartt

“And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is…

— Donna Tartt