The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

“Death is the mother of beauty,”

“And what is beauty?”

“Ter...

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is ...

“And if beauty is terror,”

“then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”

“To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, c...

“Because it is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational.

the more intelligent, the more repressed,

“Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?”

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?

Live forever.

And someplace, if there is a place where lists are kept, and credit given, I am sure there is a gold star by his name.

“Tell me,” Bunny said, and I thought I detected for the first time a note of suspicion. “Just what the Sam Hill are you guys doing out here anyway?” The woods were silent, not a sound. Henry smiled. “Why, looking for new ferns,” he said, and took a step towards him.

His face was very close to mine. To my surprise he put his hands on my shoulders and leaned forward and kissed me, right on the mouth.

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

“That’s odd,” said Henry. “The first thing I thought of when I tasted that coffee was you.” “What do you mean?” “It tasted strange. Burnt. Like your coffee.”

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.

Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.

The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that’s the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star …