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

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

But it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work.

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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.

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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.

quote by Donna Tartt
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!