Em > Em's Quotes

“But does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end-and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?
To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“There are only two stories: either you go forward or you die.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“But I grew up not knowing the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life, and by the time I discovered there was such a thing, it was too late.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

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

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“How swiftly the orphans set sail! No sooner does the starting gun fire than they’re flying! their yachts are slimmer, their lines trimmer than ours – than our stodgy barges. They drag no anchors, they haul no ballast, they toss all baggage overboard, and the one flag they ever hoist is blank.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Si tu aimes une fleur qui se trouve dans une étoile, c'est doux, la nuit, de regarder le ciel.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“C’est comme pour la fleur. Si tu aimes une fleur qui se trouve dans une étoile, c’est doux, la nuit, de regarder le ciel. Toutes les étoiles sont fleuries.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince