I’m not a literary critic. All I know is that I love Donna Tartt’s writing. After reading all 770 pages of her recent Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch(paid link), I can’t stop thinking about it.

The first half of the book was mesmerizing as I became immersed in the life and drama of young Theo Decker.

The second half of the book was confusing – some plot lines didn’t make sense. Theo’s decisions seemed unrealistic at times, and it even got a little bizarre. Yet, I couldn’t put the book down. I was rooting for Theo, even if he was no longer such a sympathetic character.

The last ten pages of the book pulled everything together with true words of wisdom, in my opinion.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes from those pages – on art and life.

Note: If you haven’t read the book, these quotes will not give anything away for you.

“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 picture because it’s universal,’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Pssst, you. Hey kid. Yes you. An individual heart shock. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entirely, and that’s not even to mention the people separated from us by time – it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority it will never strike in any deep way at all but – a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours, I was painted for you.”

The same goes for a photograph.

“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. Because – isn’t it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture – from William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: Be yourself. Follow your heart.”

Even our mistakes can result in good.

“Life – whatever else it is – is short. Fate is cruel, but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. Maybe 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 our eyes and hearts open.”

The meaning of life is to see and take in all of it, and make our choices accordingly.

Did you read the Goldfinch? If so, what did you take away from it?