Goldfinch By Donna Tartt Quotes & Sayings

All great art is an imperfect, halting attempt to catch up upon life. — John Edgar Park

I think it's very dangerous for a free society to have all the information distilled and packaged by our government and given to us. Do we know to this day who we killed in Iraq? I don't think so. If bringing war into the living room means that we as a people will say we don't want to do it that way anymore we want to figure out other ways to solve these conflicts, then I would say that photography and television have done us a great service. — Michael Deaver

The problem to solve is, whether a single or a double government would be most advantageous; and, in considering that point, I am met by this difficulty - that I cannot see that the present form of government is a double government at all. — Richard Cobden

Don't blame the messenger because the message is unpleasant. — Ken Starr

Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them. — Brittany Murphy

History will tell the story, America will always stand. — Randy Travis

I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me. — Jodie Foster

Twas a clever quibble. Here, a garment for it. — William Shakespeare

We don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are ... What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted
? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, and civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? p.761, The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt

Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background. — Tom Wicker

Life is catastrophe ... Everything is unfair. Who do we complain to in this shitty place? ... We all lose everything that matters in the end ... it's possible to play it with a kind of joy.p.767, The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt

He had an orange stain on his mouth from the prawns, the old jabberwock. — Donna Tartt

What do you think about America?"
"Everyone always smiles so big! Well - most people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid. — Donna Tartt

To a lot of us, literature's eternal significance had seemed beyond arguing - like, say, the illegality of government-sponsored torture. — Darin Strauss

Anything's possible if you just have the nerve. — J.K. Rowling

Looking beyond the silhouette and reading between the lines are the same thing; just different art forms. — Nanette L. Avery

Where's the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I've seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only - if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things - beautiful things - that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean - mending old things, preserving them, looking after them - on some level there's no rational grounds for it - ... fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn't be an object. It'd be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.
- Hobie, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt — Donna Tartt

My wife, the actress Megan Mullally, was an English major at Northwestern University and loves fiction. Like so many things in my life, she curates things for me. For example, I have the daunting prospect of Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" waiting for me when I get through my current reading pile. — Nick Offerman

Everything stopped that day, literally. I even stopped growing....Injured and traumatized children--they quite often fail to grow to normal height....Resources are diverted. The growth system shuts down....Accidents, catastrophes--something like seventy-five percent of disaster victims are convinced there were warning signs they brushed off....If you trace it back, you can see the mistake--the point you would have had a different outcome....To see the mistake, the place where you went wrong, and not be able to go back and fix it? Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p. 615 — Donna Tartt

There's a point to all the mistakes, the comebacks, the rethinking, the living
the living for all you're worth. There's a point to finding our own path. Please, give the people of Vision a chance to find theirs. — Miyuki Miyabe

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

I want to know everything. I'm probably a bit of a pest for the producers because I ask a lot of questions. — Kieran Bew