It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
But it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
“a light that made me think of long hours in dusty libraries, and old books, and silence.” — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I'd always rather stand or fall on my own mistakes. There's nothing worse than looking back, in a published book, at a… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark; it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to entertain, to make things up. The art… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
For me - showing a half-finished manuscript is tricky. Just as a bird will get spooked and abandon her eggs if some… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
“It's commonplace to say that we 'love' a book, but when we say it, we mean all sorts of things. Sometimes we… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime? — Donna Tartt Copy Share
And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“A month or two before, I would have been appalled at the idea of any murder at all. But that Sunday afternoon, as I… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
Always remember, the person we’re really working for is the person who’s restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He’s the one we… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“The silence between us was happy and strange, connected by the cord and the icy voices thinly echoing. “You don’t have to talk,” she… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“maybe that’s what’s waiting for us at the end of the journey, a majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark—a thing made of… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
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… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
“Upon meeting Julian Morrow, one has the impression that he is a man of extraordinary sympathy and warmth. But what you call his 'Asiatic… — Donna Tartt Copy Share
