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The Secret History

Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The Secret History, which has become a contemporary classic. Under the influence of their chari

Characters

Donna Tartt (15)Richard Papen (4)Henry Winter (2)

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

beauty Beautiful terror of beauty viciously beautiful

I thought too much, lived too much in the mind. It was hard to make decisions.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

Anxiety Panic Overthinking

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 Tartt, amazon.com

Aging Deep Beauty Looks Fade (Feelings Persist)

A terrible sweetness boiled up in me. Everything, for a moment was unstable and radiant as a dream.

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, amazon.com

Terrible Sweetness Radiance Life As A Dream Dream Like Reality Dreaming

The sun came suddenly from behind a rain cloud, flooding the room with glorious light that wavered on the walls like water. Camilla’s face burst into glowing bloom. A terrible sweetness boiled up in me. Everything, for a moment—mirror, ceiling, floor—was unstable and radiant as a dream. I felt a fie…

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, amazon.com

Definitive Moments Descriptions of Perfect Love Ecstasy

I’d had an old Brian Eno song running through my head (‘In New Delhi / And Hong Kong / They all know that it won’t be long …’), I now had to sing it to myself each trip up or down the stairs.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

Brian Eno References to Songs In Literature and Books

Time is something which defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

Time Defining Time

Do you remember when we studied what Plato calls telestic madness? Bakcheia? Dionysiac frenzy?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, rather impatiently. It was just like Henry to bring up something like this right now. ‘Well, we decided to try to have one.’ For a moment I thought I hadn’t understood him. ‘What?’ I said.…

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

Funny To Nerds Dionysus Bacchanal Weird Things To Say Plato

Morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

— Donna Tartt, Henry Winter, amazon.com

The Different Personalities of Light Morning Light Good Morning

Any religious ritual is arbitrary unless one is able to see past it to a deeper meaning.

— Donna Tartt, Henry Winter, amazon.com

Religious Moments Core Concepts Ritual

It’s funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn’t see this crucial moment then for what…

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, amazon.com

Definitive Moments Making Decisions

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 expl…

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, amazon.com

Breaking Language Thought Patterns

My fatal flaw is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

Idyllic Idyllic Diasters Fatal Flaw Picturesque

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we understood the gravity of our situation.

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

first lines of books

Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

— Donna Tartt, amazon.com

first lines of books Fatal Flaw

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