Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.
Donna TarttThere's nothing like having a sympathetic reader who asks the right questions, who understands what you're trying to achieve and only wants to make it better.
Donna TarttIt is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I donโt know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come togetherโmy future, my past, the whole of my lifeโand I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!
Donna Tartt