- “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
- “Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
- “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
- “It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?…To be absolutely free!”
- “It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
- “But how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?…I prefer to think of it as redistribution of matter.”
- “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.”
- “There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial.”
- “Are you happy here?…Not particularly, but you're not very happy where you are, either.”
- “There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that.”
- “For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.”
- “Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls?”
- “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.”
- “In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”
- “Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
- “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.”
- “I’m not a religious person,’ he said, after a pause. ‘But I do believe in souls. And I think some part of yours is very old.”
- “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.”
- “For as long as I could remember, it had been one of my dreams to make a serious study of a certain area of Mediterranean archaeology and to contribute, however modestly, some original data to the field.”
- “It’s not mere self-indulgence to stand once in a while apart from the continuing narrative of your life and take a good long look at where you’ve come from and where you’re going. I think you’d find, if you did it, that a lot of what you’ve been doing in the name of living doesn’t amount to much more than bullshit and distraction. And I think you’d find that a fair amount of what you’ve been avoiding in the name of living is stuff that might have ended up giving you some real pleasure.”
- “He was the only person I’d ever met who could make a book come alive in your hands. No matter what I was reading, he had something intelligent to say about it. He was funny, generous, and he knew every single thing there was to know about Greek and Roman history.”
- “I loved the physical sensation of the worn covers, the crisp-edged pages, the faint musty scent that came from the little cracks at the back of the spine.”
- “There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realize, we usually get what we want—or near enough.”
- “We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it? To live.”
- “Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.”
- “Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me than men had walked on the moon.”
- “Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so?…Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”
- “All those layers of silence upon silence.”
- “Cubitum eamus?”
- “Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.”
- “Being the only female in what was basically a boys' club must have been difficult for her.”
- “I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.”
- “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?”
- “What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?…History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.”
- “Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.”
- “It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!”
- “After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.”
- “It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very much different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment for what it actually was; I suppose we never do. Instead, I only yawned, and shook myself from the momentary daze that had come upon me, and went on my way down the stairs.”
- “There was a horrible, erratic thumping in my chest, as if a large bird was trapped inside my ribcage and beating itself to death.”
- “How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.”
- “It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
- “Henry’s a perfectionist, I mean, really-really kind of inhuman — very brilliant, very erratic and enigmatic. His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection.”
- “And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.”
- “And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”
- “I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.”
- “Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not.”
- “They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.”
- “Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment.”
- “I hate Gucci,' said Francis. ‘Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. ‘Really? I think it's rather grand.' ‘Come on, Henry.' ‘Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.' ‘I don't see what you think is grand about that.' ‘Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.”
- “Though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
