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"Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life-a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple-the painter is giving you a secret message. He's telling you that living things don't last-it's all temporary. Death in life. That's why they're called natures mortes. Maybe you don't see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer-there it is."
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"Even as I hold youI think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me,the flippant last turnof a revolving door,emptying you out, changed,away from me.Even as I hold youI am letting go."
"Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing."
"Perception is to be blamed. It, if given due attention, keeps changing."
"Those who are made can be unmade."
"A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains."
"No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed."
"It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting."
"Time melts away in every passing moment."
"It is the nature of the circumstances to disperse. If there is attachment with the circumstance, there will be abhorrence when they get dispersed."
"Don't wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may be too late. If we know how to live according to the insight of impermanence, we will not make many mistakes. We can be happy right now. We can love our beloved, care for her, and make her happy today. And we won't run toward the future, losing our life, which is available only in the present moment."
Explore more quotes by Donna Tartt
"Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent."
"To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone."
"Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist."
"I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories."
"On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business."
"Though Julian could be marvelously kind in difficult circumstances of all sorts, I sometimes got the feeling that he was less pleased by kindness itself than by the elegance of the gesture."
"We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people " the ancients no less than us " have civilized themselves through the wilful repression of the old, animal self."
"When we are sad-at least I am like this-it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don't change."
"In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out."
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