The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

“Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone—was it van Gogh?—said that orange is the color of insanity. Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.”

“It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children. Afraid of the dark.”