Goldfinch Quotes

“And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to
you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently
as if I were standing in the room with you. That life—whatever
else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That
Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we
have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always
so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway:
wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping
eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise
from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is
a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn't painting that bird from his mind, you know? That's a real little guy, chained up on the wall, there. If I saw him mixed up with dozen other birds all the same kind, I could pick him out, no problem.
And he's right. So could I. And if I could go back in time I'd clip the chain in a heartbeat and never care a minute that the picture was never painted.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Why did i obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I didn't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such an interest in me.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I had taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For I had thought that this last touchstone of the past, at least, would be where I'd left it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Because I don't care what anyone says or how often or willingly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, here's the truth: life is catastrophe. The basic fact of existence - of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do - is catastrophe.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Through the open door he could see the swimming pool and its silent fountain, and also, in a corner of the tiled garden, a cat playing with a little bird. This ritual of extended death intrigued him. The Egyptians held the cat to be a sacred animal: of all creatures the nearest in intelligence to Man. And in the whole of Nature, only cats and men – that he could think of – derived an obvious pleasure from cruelty.”
― Robert Harris - Pompeii