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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.

Donna Tartt

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Donna Tartt
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Lead
Vision
Away
Also
Certain
Hard
Truths
Important
Romantic
Life
Ugly

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For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.
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I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.
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Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time
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It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.
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Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.
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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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After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great
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Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.
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Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.
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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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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 bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.
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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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It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.
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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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When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
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All those layers of silence upon silence.
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I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.
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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.
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Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.
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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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