Death Quote by Donna Tartt — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.”

“How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.”

“And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time — so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.”

“What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?”

“Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious”

“Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?”

“I'm one of those who doesn't think there is much difference”

“Do you wrestle with dreams?”

“Hope is the great deceiver. Hope is the piper who leads us sleepy to our slaughter.”

“Too much of water hast thou poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears.”