The Goldfinch Quotes

“Every new event - everything I did for the rest of my life - would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.”

“Who was it said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?”

“‘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.’”

“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 brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

“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.”

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.”

“‘When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.’”

“...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.”

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only - if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things - beautiful things - that they connect you to some larger beauty?”

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”

“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”

“Sometimes it’s about playing a poor hand well.”

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

“I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.”

“‘The world won’t come to me,’ he used to say, ‘so I must go to it.’”

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. 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.”

“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.”

“Because-they are saying, ‘one of the great art recoveries of history.’ And this is the part I hoped would please you- maybe not who knows, but I hoped. Museum masterworks, returned to public ownership! Stewardship of cultural treasure! Great joy! All the angels are singing! but it would never have happened, if not for you.”

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. 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.”

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”

“When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.”

“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 brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”

“Where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes— the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be?”

“As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.”

“I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad; as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other.”

“Understand, by saying God, I am merely using God as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly.”

“I did know. Because if possible to paint fakes that look like that? Las Vegas would be the most beautiful city in the history of earth! Anyway- so funny! Here I am, so proudly teaching you to steal apples and candy from the magazine, while you have stolen world masterpiece of art.”

“Because this is closed circle, you understand? Horst is right on the money about that. No one is going to buy this painting. Impossible to sell. But-black market, barter currency? Can be traded back and forth forever! Valuable, portable. Hotel rooms- going back and forth. Drugs, arms, girls, cash- whatever you life.”

“Good doesn’t always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result form bad, does it? Even the wise and good cannot see the end of all actions. Scary idea!”