Quotes from book
The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other honors. Published in 2013, it was Tartt's first novel since The Little Friend in 2002.The novel is a coming-of-age tale told in the first person. The protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother dies. While staggering through the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch Golden Age painting called The Goldfinch. It becomes a singular source of hope for him as he descends into a world of crime.

Donna Tartt photo

“The world won't come to me… so I must go to it.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt photo

“… and yet isn't it always the inappropriate thing, the thing that doesn't quite work, that's oddly the dearest?”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt photo

“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.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt photo

“…still when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life…”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt photo

“My hopes for a relationship with her were wholly unreal, whereas my ongoing misery, and frustration, were an all-too-horrible reality. Was groundless, hopeless romantic obsession any way to waste the rest of my life?”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch