Sophie

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

“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one's surprise - in an entirely different world.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

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

“But one mustn't underestimate the primal appeal—to lose one's self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History