Donna Tartt

'If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective,' I said, 'I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.'

The weekends at Francis's house were the happiest times. The trees turned early that fall but the days stayed warm well into October, and in the country we spent most of our time outside.

But how,' said Charles, who was close to tears, 'how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?'

Henry lit a cigarette. 'I prefer to think of it,' he had said, 'as redistribution of matter.'

“And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”
“To live,” said Camilla.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell

Piano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift, in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colorful past, easily accessible to strangers.

The dazzle of this fictive childhood – full of swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents has all but eclipsed the drab original

I was then convinced that my unhappiness was indigenous to that place. Perhaps a part of it was. While to a certain extent Milton is right – the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell and so forth – it is nonetheless clear that Piano was modeled less on Paradise than that other, more dolorous city

In doing so, we hope to provide the individual not only with facts, but with the raw materials of wisdom.'

For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless