The Secret History Quotes

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Are you always up this early?' I asked him.
'Almost always,' he said without looking up. 'It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Mais, vrai, J'ai trop pleure! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I'd always hoped that someday I'd be able to use it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But one mustn't underestimate the primal appeal—to lose one's self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty -unless she is wed to something more meaningful -is always superficial”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Upon meeting Julian Morrow, one has the impression that he is a man of extraordinary sympathy and warmth. But what you call his 'Asiatic serenity' is, I think, a mask for great coldness. The face one shows him he invariably reflects back at one, creating the illusion of warmth and depth when in fact he is brittle and shallow as a mirror.”
― Donna Tartt

“It was heart-shaking. Glorious. Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know. . . . Mean we think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it's not at all. Time is something which defies spring and water, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no 'I,' and yet it's not at all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hears in Eastern religions, the self being a drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It's more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of the self. You have no idea how pallid the workday boundaries of ordinary existence seem, after such an ecstasy.”
― Donna Tartt

“I believe having a great diversity of teachers is harmful and confusing for a young mind, in the same way I believe that it is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially”
― Donna Tartt

“We had not spoken about the incident in my room several nights before and, in the drowsy silence of the car, I felt the need to make things plain.
“You know, Francis,” I said.
“What?”
It seemed the best thing was just to come right out and say it. “You know,” I said, “I’m really not attracted to you. I mean, not that—”
“Isn’t that interesting,” he said coolly. “I’m really not attracted to you, either.”
“But—”
“You were there.”
We drove the rest of the way to school in a not very comfortable silence.”
― Donna Tartt

“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.”
― Donna Tartt

“But if I’ve learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
― Donna Tartt

“I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.
"Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said.
"But you're not very happy where you are, either.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Do you really think what we do is work?

- What else should I call it?

I should call it the most glorious kind of play.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“cubitum eamus”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“To me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Even now I remember those pictures, like pictures in a storybook one loved as a child. Radiant meadows, mountains vaporous in the trembling distance; leaves ankle-deep on a gusty autumn road; bonfires and fogs in the valleys; cellos, dark windowpanes, snow.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling, almost medieval way which would not be apparent to the casual observer.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It's a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I feel that you're becoming just a shadow in my life.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There are such thing as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“What are the dead anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“love is a cruel and terrible master.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The gesture was, to me, tremendously touching and all of a sudden I realised I had been wrong about these people. These were good people, common people; the salt of the earth; people whom I should count myself fortunate to know.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Psychology is a terrible a word.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“She was the queen who finished out the suit of dark Jacks, dark King, and Joker.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“All I have to worry about is myself, you know. The rest will take care of itself.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Forgive me, for all the things I did, but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― dona tartt

“But a deep melancholy that would not lift for many weeks had already begun to settle around me.”
― Donna Tartt