Quote

My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long period of time.

Donna Tartt

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Donna Tartt
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Come
Periods
Many
Elements
Unexpectedly
Different
Aren
Conceptual
Long
Novel
Generated
Really
Single
Spark
Time
Literature
Sparks
Process
Novels
Together
Period

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Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.
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I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view.
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Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.
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Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
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But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’ Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.
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Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction
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Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
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In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.
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But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.
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Beauty alters the grain of reality.
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I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.
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You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.
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Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?
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I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.
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The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.
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Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life
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When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
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There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.
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To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole.
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After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great
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