Donna Of Tartt. Goldfinch (№ 431193)

But even though I understood that I was very lucky, I still did not feel either happiness or even gratitude for such luck. The feeling was that my spirit itself had changed at some chemical level: as if the acid balance in my soul had been disturbed and life had burned out of me - irreparably, irreversibly, like a frond of a coral polyp turned to stone to the very core.