Quotes by Donna Tartt

About Donna Tartt:

Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). Tartt won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003 and the Pulitzer Prize (Fiction) for The Goldfinch in 2014 and she was named to the TIME 100: The 100 Most Influential People in 2014.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

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

Donna Tartt

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.

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

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

Donna Tartt

The 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 Tartt

Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy.

Donna Tartt

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

Donna Tartt

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

Donna Tartt

I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.

Donna Tartt

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

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

Well, I think storytellers have always found murder a fascinating device.

Donna Tartt

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

Donna Tartt

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

Donna Tartt

I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.

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

Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.

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

Author Bio

  • NameDonna Tartt
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornDecember 23, 1963
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksThe Secret History; The Little Friend; The Goldfinch