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  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "title": "The Secret History",
  "slug": "the-secret-history",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/donna-tartt/the-secret-history",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/donna-tartt/the-secret-history.json",
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      "slug": "she-really-was",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/donna-tartt/the-secret-history/she-really-was",
      "text": "She really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.",
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      "slug": "i-dont-have",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/donna-tartt/the-secret-history/i-dont-have",
      "text": "\"I don't have any friends here for the winter,\" I said, and I didn't. \"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 know you don't believe me, but they start to fall away when you get to be my age.\"",
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      "page": 120,
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      "slug": "death-is-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/donna-tartt/the-secret-history/death-is-the",
      "text": "\"Death is the mother of beauty,\" said Henry. \"And what is beauty?\" \"Terror.\" [...] \"And if beauty is terror,\" said Julian, \"then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?\" \"To live,\" said Camilla. \"To live forever,\" said Bunny, chin cupped in his palm.",
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      "page": 39,
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      "slug": "the-greeks-were",
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      "text": "\"The Greeks were different. They had a passion for order and symmetry, much like the Romans, but they knew how foolish it was to deny the unseen world, the old gods. Emotion, darkness, barbarism.\" He looked at the ceiling for a moment, his face almost troubled. \"Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?\" he said. \"It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.\"",
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      "page": 42,
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