The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

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 an

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

The trick was to address yourself to the projection, the fantasy self—the connoisseur, the discerning bon vivant—as opposed to the insecure person actually standing in front of you.

the Hart Crane we’d been reading in English. Brooklyn Bridge.

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.

she moved with more assurance than most of the girls I knew; and the sly, composed glance that she slid over me as she brushed past drove me crazy.

The memory of that childhood afternoon had sustained me for years; it was as if—sick with loneliness for my mother—I’d imprinted on her like some orphaned animal; when in fact, joke on me, she’d been doped up and knocked lamb-daffy from a head injury, ready to throw her arms around the first stranger who’d walked in.

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.

For in the deepest, most unshakable part of myself reason was useless. She was the missing kingdom, the unbruised part of myself I’d lost with my mother. Everything about her was a snowstorm of fascination,