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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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Donna Tartt
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: December 23
Novelist
Writer
Greenwood
Mississippi
Donna Louise Tartt
Really
Inside
Way
Loved
Books
Internalized
Read
Aquariums
Often
Essential
Firsts
Essentials
Book
Loves
First
Childhood
More quotes by Donna Tartt
The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.
Donna Tartt
I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.
Donna Tartt
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
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
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
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
Donna Tartt
It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.
Donna Tartt
It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.
Donna Tartt
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.
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
After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great
Donna Tartt
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
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
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
I really do work in solitude.
Donna Tartt
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
I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.
Donna Tartt
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
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
Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
Donna Tartt