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"Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they've been duped by the same pair of eyes."
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"How we choose to perceive affects how we partake of reality, narrowly or completely."

"We often focus on what is wrong and complain that nothing is beautiful."

"The mind can fool the heart, as the heart can fool the mind."

"The feeling that the world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong."

"People see what they expect to see."

"The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish."

"He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much, but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken."

"I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed."

"Life is an illusion which wisely prevents you from seeing yourself fully."

"When I deeply look at a pious, I see no affection but fear; and when I look at an atheist, I see no fear but conceit!"
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."


"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."


"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."


"And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it - although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn't fit into a story, what doesn't have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy."


"So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter."


"It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to lose control completely? To throw off all the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?"


"Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they've been duped by the same pair of eyes."
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