Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the… — 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
The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
Shakespearean words, foreign words, slang and dialect and made-up phrases from kids on the street corner: English has room for them all.… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad,… — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to… — 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
I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of… — 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 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
I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence. — 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
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 hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime? — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
Well, I think storytellers have always found murder a fascinating device. — Donna Tartt Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
