the secret history, donna tartt
viriginia
dream me the world; semi-hiatus
iz, xvii, she/her
when people fall in love, they burst into flames
‘By the time you see this announcement,’ he says, 'I will be dead.’ He goes on to say that it wasn’t a career in law enforcement that killed him but two packs of cigarettes a day. I saw this at about three o'clock in the morning, alone in my apartment, on a black-and-white set with lots of interference. White noise and snow. He seemed to be speaking directly at me, right out of the television set. For a moment I was disoriented, seized by panic; could a ghost embody itself through wavelengths, electronic dots, a picture tube? What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?’ - The Secret History by Donna Tartt
wild-ouest
ask your doctor if joining a selective group of classics majors at a prestigious liberal arts university and descending into moral decrepitude is right for you
Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?
… and on the foot of her bed was laid a half-played game of solitaire.
the holy trinity of dark academia that is kill your darlings, dead poets society, and the secret history
moodboards : The Secret History by Donna Tartt ★ Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
“Henry looked up from his books at me. 'You’re not very happy where you com from, are you?’ he said.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze
ya lit meme: [3/10] series or books → the secret history by donna tartt
“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.”