“If a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see and think and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh I love this painting because it’s universal’ ”I love this painting because it speaks to mankind’. That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. ‘Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you.’ An individual heart shock…A really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular.”

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“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?”

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“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch