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Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

Donna Tartt

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Donna Tartt
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Call
Whatever
Beautiful
Quiver
Terror
Beauty

More quotes by Donna Tartt

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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.
Donna Tartt
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Even if you need, and want, a second opinion, it can be dangerous to have people telling you what they think you ought to add, or cut, before you've even finished telling your story. One loses heart one loses energy and interest. Or at least I do.
Donna Tartt
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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.
Donna Tartt
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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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The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.
Donna Tartt
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For me - showing a half-finished manuscript is tricky. Just as a bird will get spooked and abandon her eggs if some outside party comes around and makes too much noise or pokes around the nest too intrusively - well, that's what it's like for me if I show work too early and I get a lot of editorial suggestions at the wrong time.
Donna Tartt
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I really do work in solitude.
Donna Tartt
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Beauty alters the grain of reality.
Donna Tartt
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I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.
Donna Tartt
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I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.
Donna Tartt
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I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.
Donna Tartt
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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.
Donna Tartt
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Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.
Donna Tartt
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Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.
Donna Tartt
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It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.
Donna Tartt
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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.
Donna Tartt
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From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .
Donna Tartt
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Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.
Donna Tartt
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Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.
Donna Tartt
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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.
Donna Tartt