Donna Tartt

“It does all swing around strangely sometimes, doesn't it.”

— Donna Tartt

“No, he’s asleep. Where’s my mother? Is”

— Donna Tartt

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

— Donna Tartt

“animal in the sitter (a tendency that,”

— Donna Tartt

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life

— Donna Tartt

“How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.”

— Donna Tartt

Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.

— Donna Tartt

“That woman can sell water to a drowning man.”

— Donna Tartt

“Clearly ‘worry’ was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person.”

— Donna Tartt

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

— Donna Tartt

“The other day, I tried to remember what was the word for ‘dragonfly’ and couldn’t.”

— Donna Tartt

“he said well if you can’t plan it out ahead of time, you’ll just have to work it out as you go…

— Donna Tartt

“but the first rule of restorations, as he'd taught me earlier on, was that you never did what you couldn't reverse.”

— Donna Tartt

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

— Donna Tartt

“Janet who said excellent! in answer to everything and drank coffee from a pink mug that said Janet.”

— Donna Tartt

“And though there was something pathetic about it—taking comfort in her left-behind things like a puppy snuggled in an old coat...”

— Donna Tartt

I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for…

— Donna Tartt

To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what…

— Donna Tartt

“...it's so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness. Fires, wars. The Parthenon, used as a munitions storehouse. I…

— Donna Tartt

“But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was…

— Donna Tartt

“maybe that’s what’s waiting for us at the end of the journey, a majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves…

— Donna Tartt

“crazy,” she’d said, “but I’d be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest…

— Donna Tartt

But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’ Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer…

— Donna Tartt

One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my…

— Donna Tartt

“All those years I’d drifted along too glassy and insulated for any kind of reality to push through: a delirium which had…

— 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

“If a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think,…

— Donna Tartt

“And-maybe it’s ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn’t matter since no one’s ever going to see this—but does…

— Donna Tartt

“[S]he came up suddenly beside me so I saw her reflection in a mirror. At the sight of her I was paralyzed…

— Donna Tartt

“Raviv and Avi, and—my favorite—a Russian Jew named Grisha. (“ ‘Russian Jew’ contradiction in terms,” he explained, in a lavish plume of…

— Donna Tartt

“I accepted all this counsel politely, with a glassy smile and a glaring sense of unreality. Many adults seemed to interpret this…

— Donna Tartt

“Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than…

— Donna Tartt

“For in the deepest, most unshakable part of myself reason was useless.”

— Donna Tartt

“Welty’s instruction; that I’d had a concussion. That I hadn’t”

— Donna Tartt

All those layers of silence upon silence.

— Donna Tartt

“But if you close the door… the night could last forever…”

— Donna Tartt

Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.

— Donna Tartt

Who was it said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?

— Donna Tartt

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

— Donna Tartt

“You have an unusual equipment for fate, exercise with care!’ ”

— Donna Tartt