... i think of what hobie said : beauty alters the grain of reality. and i keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom : namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

 - from : THE GOLDFINCH, donna tartt, p. 760

to understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole; ...

 - from : THE GOLDFINCH, donna tartt, p. 603

the world won't come to me, so i must go to it.
  - welty in THE GOLDFINCH, donna tartt, p. 139