Daniela > Daniela's Quotes

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

“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”
― Euripides

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

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. 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? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It always makes me a little sad when you laugh," Julian went on. "The way it sort of takes you by surprise. I love it, it has that sweet sincerity that's the best part of you, but it still kills me how you never seem to expect it. All I want to do is make you happy, and you're the unhappiest person I've ever met.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“The question isn't whether magic is real. It's whether I can touch it without being consumed by it.”
― Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

“I still feel ghosts around me: the ghosts of the five Dalloway girls who defied the boxes and coffins the world tried to put them in. The ghosts of other women who attended or worked at this school, but whose legacies were forgotten instead of deified. The ghosts of every girl who came here and felt history beneath her feet. But I'm not haunted anymore. Maybe I never was.”
― Victoria Lee, A Lesson in Vengeance

“Were you in love with him?'
'Yes,' I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. 'Yes, I was.' It's not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I'm in love with him still.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, 'is where the tragedy is.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”
― Euripides, Medea

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”
― Euripides, Medea

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Nothing is ever simple. And when it is, it's rarely every worth it.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, From Blood and Ash

“When you listen to me, I think the stars will fall.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, From Blood and Ash

“You're such a bad influence"
"Only the bad can be influenced, Princess”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, From Blood and Ash

“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Time ensures children never know their parents young.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“Imagine me
master of my own universe
I am everything I ever dreamed of”
― Tahereh Mafi, Imagine Me