She closed her eyes, dark-lidded, dark shadows beneath them; she really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.
Donna TarttThere is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial
Donna TarttStill when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life.
Donna TarttThe books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.
Donna TarttThere is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.
Donna Tartt