Quote

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

Donna Tartt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Donna Tartt
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Good
Mediocre
Ten
Ones
Rather
Write
Book
Writing

More quotes by Donna Tartt

Image
Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.
Donna Tartt
Image
In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.
Donna Tartt
Image
Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.
Donna Tartt
Image
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.
Donna Tartt
Image
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.
Donna Tartt
Image
I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.
Donna Tartt
Image
If I'm not working, I'm not happy. That's it. That's the prerequisite for me for happiness.
Donna Tartt
Image
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
Donna Tartt
Image
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
Donna Tartt
Image
On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business.
Donna Tartt
Image
If I had grown up in that house I couldn't have loved it more, couldn't have been more familiar with the creak of the swing, or the pattern of the clematis vines on the trellis, or the velvety swell of land as it faded to gray on the horizon . . . . The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood.
Donna Tartt
Image
When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
Donna Tartt
Image
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?
Donna Tartt
Image
I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.
Donna Tartt
Image
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
Image
A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.
Donna Tartt
Image
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.
Donna Tartt
Image
I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.
Donna Tartt
Image
Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
Donna Tartt
Image
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.
Donna Tartt