Donna Tartt Quotes

That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.

The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house.

What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood.

It was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.

I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?

A girl my age had been murdered in these woods and I'd seen her last terrified moments, watched her bleed to death in this forest. A life like mine had ended here, and it didn't matter how many times I'd seen deaths in movies, it wasn't the same, and I wasn't ever going to forget it.

When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came -- where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.

Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.

...and trauma had a way of burning memories deeper into the mind.

In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,--no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.

From perfect grief there need not beWisdom or even memory;One thing then learned remains to me -The woodspurge has a cup of three.

This is a horrific day in Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured.

I've been at the funerals of a lot of people in my neighborhood. Sometimes when I sit back and relax, I think about that and just blank out.

I saw a great many men die afterwards, some suffering horribly, but I do not recall any death that affected me quite so much as that of this first victim in my platoon.

I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened - the fallout of the bad thing, when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged.

I have experienced a murderer among my friends. Many, many years ago. At close range I have seen the impact of it. I knew the victim, I went to the funeral, I have been to the house, to the specific room where the killing took place, and I was stunned by it. It's such a blow.

I think that what happens when you lose a parent, where you lose - you drop into a different kind of serious.

When I held in my hands the remains of Gunther, I had a strong feeling, like a phantom pain of an amputee.

We're all painfully aware of how suddenly violence can occur, how crippling it is, and how survivors have to find a way back from that.

If I was to pretend my father didn't exist and I didn't have anything to remember him by, then it wouldn't be healthy.

I still have dreams about Hillsborough. Well, nightmares, anyway.

Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.

My guess is that fearful events are the hardest to root out. They're the ones we naturally remember the best, after all.

Because that’s how it works after something terrible has happened. You know this is true if something terrible has ever happened to you. A thousand objects take on new meaning. Everything is a reminder of something else.