Author of quotes: Donna Of Tartt. Page 1

For me, Camilla was a dream come true. One look at her awakened to life an almost limitless world of fantasy - from Hellenism to Gothic, from vulgar to sacred.

Always, always the same toast. Live forever.

I believe that in the life of every person there is a certain critical period when the character is determined once and for all.

All my life, people have mistaken my shyness for gloom, snobbery, bad mood, and the like.

May God consume us, dissolve us in himself, tear our bones like a string of beads. And then spit us out revived.

It’s not easy for us to admit it, but it’s the thought of losing control that most attracts people who are used to constantly controlling themselves, people like ourselves. All truly civilized peoples became such, purposefully suppressing the primitive, animal nature in themselves. Think about it, are we, gathered in this room, so different from the ancient Greeks or Romans? With their obsession with duty, piety, devotion, self-sacrifice? All the things that make our contemporaries shiver?

We are used to believing that religious ecstasy is found only in primitive cultures, but it is often the most developed nations that are exposed to it. The Greeks, as you know, were not very different from us. They were highly civilized, adhering to a complex and rather strict system of rules and regulations. Nevertheless, they often fell into wild mass frenzy: riot, visions, dancing, massacre. I suppose all this would seem to us to be irreversible, clinical madness. However, the Greeks, at least some of them, could voluntarily plunge into this state and leave it voluntarily. We cannot just dismiss the evidence on this score. They are quite well documented, although the ancient commentators were as puzzled as we are. Some believe that the Dionysian frenzy was the result of fasting and prayer, others that wine was the cause. Undoubtedly, the collective nature of hysteria also played a role. Yet the extreme manifestations of this phenomenon are still inexplicable. The participants in the sacraments, figuratively speaking, were thrown into the unconscious state, which preceded the appearance of the mind, where the personality was replaced by something else - and by “other” I mean something that is not subject to death. Something inhuman.

Objects that are repulsive in themselves, such as corpses, can delight the viewer when captured in works of art.

There is nothing more terrible than bloodshed, but it is the bloodiest places of Homer and Aeschylus that often turn out to be the most magnificent.

It was worse than hopeless.

I've been there: turn off the brain, lomyat forward.

I love educated children. Such as you really don't.

My personal hell is the life of a housewife, filled with worthless people and worthless events.

Beautiful, if it is not combined with anything more significant, is nothing more than a bright rattle.