Erica

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I feared so-you're sentimental. You're not like me. I'm a romantic little materialist."

"I'm not sentimental-I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last-the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when a certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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