Reading Notes: The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

"When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch's ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature - fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place."

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"Strange, I thought ... how a few hours could change everything - or rather, how strange to find that the present contained such a bright shard of the living past, damaged and eroded but not destroyed."

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"For humans - trapped in biology - there was no mercy... Time destroyed us all soon enough. But to destroy, or lose, a deathless thing - to break bonds stronger than the temporal - was a metaphysical uncoupling all its own, a startling new flavor of despair."

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...beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful."