THE SECRET HISTORY: STARTERS
a collection of quotes, phrases, and sayings from the 1992 novel The Secret History by Donna Tartt. change & alter as needed.
"I suppose, at one time in my life, I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."
"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's lying on my feet. It's a sort of gift I have."
"I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive."
"He can't be all that elitist if he accepted me."
"Well, if he doesn't know, I'm not going to tell him."
"No person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us."
"Bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful."
"Let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones... then spit us out, reborn."
"I mean to say, [name] is a handsome fellow and a sterling character, but I wouldn't want to marry him, would I?"
"You had better watch out. I've heard some weird shit about those people."
"You're always saying that, [name], but I just don't think it's true."
"[Name], put me down. I'm bleeding all over you."
"You shouldn't push your friends away like that. The best friends you'll ever have are the ones you're making right now."
"I told you, I don't have any friends here."
"I think it's good to change the place where one sleeps from time to time. It gives one more interesting dreams."
"I mean, he's not what you think. Or what [name] thinks, or anybody else. For a while there, he had me fooled but good."
"The appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great."
"You're being so nice about this. I feel awfully embarrassed by the whole thing."
"Well, you may or may not know this, but [name] is a little jealous of you."
"Jesus, [name], you know everything. You make me sick."
"They say the same about arsenic, but I wouldn't like to try it."
"Anything I do will be dangerous, you know."
"What do you and [name] need a secret code for?"
"A person can do an awful lot of talking in twelve hours."
"If we keep it as casual as possible, no one will give us a second glance. People don't pay attention to ninety percent of what they see."
"Really, there's nothing to worry about. It seems risky, but if you look at it logically, it couldn't be safer."
"Who do you think [name] would be more apt to believe?"
"Forgive me for being blunt, but if you think you have any influence over [name], you're sadly mistaken. He's not particularly fond of you, and if I may speak plainly, he never has been."
"There were some things you had to know, I suppose, but I feel I've done you a disservice by involving you this far."
"What is unthinkable is undoable."
"Anyway, you want to come to this party?"
"You idiot. Did you know your shirt is on inside out?"
"I had a dream tonight. You were in it."
"I need more than coffee."
"I'm embarrassed that people will think we went to see such bad movies."
"He knows we're lying. He just doesn't know what we're lying about."
"I prefer to think of it as a redistribution of matter."
"These guys will chop you up and put you in a garbage bag for twenty bucks."
"You know, we've done a terrible thing."
"You know, I'm really not attracted to you."
"Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale."
"You look as if you were in a barroom brawl."
"People get upset, all of a sudden they want to listen to old hippie garbage they would never listen to if they were in their right mind. When my cat died, I had to go out and borrow all these Simon & Garfunkel records."
"By the way, I've been meaning to ask, what did you do to your eye?"
"Murder is pollution. The murderer defiles everyone he comes into contact with. And the only way to purify blood is through blood."
"You amaze me. You think nothing exists if you can't see it."
"He loved you, too. He would have wanted you to know that. You know that, don't you, dear?"
"Do you think I should go to the hospital?"
"I didn't take anything. You know very well I didn't."
"I would've told them anything if I thought they'd send me home."
"I mean, I've been drinking a bit more than I should. I'm the first to admit that."
"I never brought your name up, man. I hardly fucking know you. But they got it from somewhere. And it wasn't from me."
"Look at [name]. Don't you just love him? If he called me up and asked me to marry him, I would do it in, like, one second."
"Is death really so terrible a thing? It seems terrible to you, because you are young, but who is to say he is not better off now than you are? Or — if death is a journey to another place — that you will not see him again?"
"I'm not taking sides. I just think whatever you're doing, you picked a bad time to do it."
"[Name], it's none of my business, but I hope for God's sake you know what you're doing."
"What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you have to make things so hard for everybody?!"
"You don't feel a great deal of emotion for other people, do you?"
"My life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me."
"I know I said earlier that he was perfect, but he wasn't perfect. Far from it — he could be silly and vain and remote and often cruel, and still, we loved him, in spite of, because."
"Flesh and blood are frail and weak, and there comes a time when we have to transcend our teachers."
"I loved him more than my own father. I loved him more than anyone in the world."
"I don't care what happens to him. I don't care if he dies. I wish he was dead."
"[Name] can't hurt you. You're perfectly safe out here."
"Kidnap is not the word that I would use."
"So, you've come to kill me?"
"If you want to shoot me, [name], go ahead and do it. It'll be the stupidest thing you ever did in your life."
"The stupidest thing I ever did in my life was listening to you."
"I managed to get out of taking my French exams next week, due to the very excellent excuse of having a gunshot wound to the stomach."
"Forgive me, for all the things I did, but mostly for the ones I did not."
"You know, everybody is saying that you're dead."