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
Process
Novels
Together
Period
Come
Periods
Many
Elements
Unexpectedly
Different
Aren
Conceptual
Long
Novel
Generated
Really
Single
Spark
Time
Literature
Sparks

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Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.
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I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
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Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.
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One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.
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I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories.
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I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.
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Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.
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To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.
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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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Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.
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Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life
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Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.
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If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.
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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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Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
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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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When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
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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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