"It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving o...

Photo by Ákos Szabó

Photo by Ian Turnell










...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

More Donna Tartt quotes
"When we are sad—at least I am like this—it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don't change.
"When we are sad...it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to things that don't change.
"But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a br...
"I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mothe...
"He did touch people's lives, the lives of strangers, in an entirely unanticipated way. It was they who really mourned him - or what they thought was h...