“One’s thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.”
More from Donna Tartt
“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”
“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
“But it’s so heartbreaking and unnecessary how we lose things. From pure carelessness.”