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"Life - whatever else it is - is short maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open."
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"The dead do not needaspirin orsorrow,I suppose.but they might needrain.not shoesbut a place towalk.not cigarettes,they tell us,but a place to burn.or we're told:space and a place to flymight be thesame.the dead don't need me.nor do theliving.but the dead might needeachother.in fact, the dead might needeverything weneedandwe need so muchif we only knewwhat itwas.it isprobablyeverythingand we will allprobably dietrying to getitor diebecause wedon't getit.I hopeyou will understandwhen I am deadI got as muchaspossible."

"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."

"We're not outside the world... We are the world. We're its language. So we live and it lives. You see? If we don't say the words, what is their in our world?"

"In a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don't exist. I am just a Vox et preaterea nihil."

"And so, it is always the case that the past is irreparably land-locked, and the future has yet to land. And here we are, living out our lives on the precariously thin line which separates the two."

"Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present."
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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