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Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction
Donna Tartt
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Donna Tartt
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Life
Fiction
Blood
Character
More quotes by Donna Tartt
The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.
Donna Tartt
But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.
Donna Tartt
I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?
Donna Tartt
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
Donna Tartt
Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
Donna Tartt
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Donna Tartt
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.
Donna Tartt
I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.
Donna Tartt
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
I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.
Donna Tartt
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
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
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
When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
Donna Tartt
I really do work in solitude.
Donna Tartt
But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.
Donna Tartt
Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.
Donna Tartt
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
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
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.
Donna Tartt