Donna Tartt Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• Always remember, the person we’re really working for is the person who’s restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He’s the one we want to impress.

  Donna Tartt

  Years, Pieces, Want

  4 Copy quote

• There's nothing like having a sympathetic reader who asks the right questions, who understands what you're trying to achieve and only wants to make it better.

  Donna Tartt

  Trying, Want, Achieve

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Distance, Events, Growing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Cutting, Thinking

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• ...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

  Donna Tartt

  Privilege, Glory

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's doing right can actually influence the unwritten parts of a novel in a positive way - praise helps a writer know what's good about what he's written, what's interesting and exciting, and what to work for in writing the conclusion.

  Donna Tartt

  Writing, Thinking, Editors

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.

  Donna Tartt

  People, Childhood, World

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Numbers, Stories, Might

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.5, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Tears, Matter

  4 Copy quote

• In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

  Donna Tartt

  Essentials, Way, Subtle

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.8, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

  Donna Tartt

  Writing, Literature, Admire

  8 Copy quote

• I really do work in solitude.

  Donna Tartt

  Solitude

  4 Copy quote

• In 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 Tartt

  Order, Long, Work Out

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Character, Long

  24 Copy quote

• There's a big anti-intellectual strain in the American south, and there always has been. We're not big on thought.

  Donna Tartt

  America, Intellectual, Bigs

  "A talent to tantalise" by Katharine Viner, www.theguardian.com. October 18, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• As I stood with her on the platform - she impatient, tapping her foot, leaning forward to look down the tracks - it seemed more than I could bear to see her go. Francis was around the corner, buying her a book to read on the train. 'I don't want you to leave,' I said. 'I don't want to, either.' 'Then don't.' 'I have to.' We stood looking at each other. It was raining. She looked at me with her rain-colored eyes. Camilla, I love you,' I said. 'Let's get married.

  Donna Tartt

  Rain, Book, Love You

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.519, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Clearly something had gone wrong, badly, only I wasn't quite sure what—apart from knowing that I was responsible somehow, in the generalized miasma of shame and unworthiness and being-a-burden that never quite left me.

  Donna Tartt

  Knowing, Gone, Never Quit

  Donna Tartt (2013). “The Goldfinch”, p.278, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Couple, Book, Aunt

  7 Copy quote

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