Quote

Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction

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
Fiction
Blood
Character
Life

More quotes by Donna Tartt

Image
Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.
Donna Tartt
Image
But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.
Donna Tartt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
Donna Tartt
Image
All those layers of silence upon silence.
Donna Tartt
Image
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
Image
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.
Donna Tartt
Image
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Donna Tartt
Image
I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?
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
It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.
Donna Tartt
Image
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.
Donna Tartt
Image
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
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
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
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
After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great
Donna Tartt
Image
In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.
Donna Tartt