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 TarttStorytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.
Donna TarttI just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.
Donna TarttEverything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.
Donna TarttThe 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 TarttThe 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 TarttChildren - 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 TarttChildren love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy.
Donna TarttThe job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to entertain, to make things up. The art of what I do lies not in research or even recollection but primarily in invention.
Donna TarttThe novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.
Donna TarttI'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.
Donna TarttCharacter, to me, is the life's blood of fiction.
Donna TarttI think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.
Donna TarttChildren have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.
Donna TarttThere's also a bit of family echo in the character of Harriet. Harriet is kind of a recurring state of mind in my mother's side of the family.
Donna TarttBut it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work.
Donna TarttWell, I think storytellers have always found murder a fascinating device.
Donna TarttThe job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.
Donna TarttI think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.
Donna TarttIn order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.
Donna TarttTaking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent.
Donna TarttActually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
Donna Tartt
