Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt
Donna Tarttis an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch. Tartt won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003 and the Pulitzer Prizefor The Goldfinch in 2014 and she was named in the TIME 100: The 100 Most Influential People in 2014...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 December 1963
CityGreenwood, MS
CountryUnited States of America
art jobs lying
The 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.
wall flower reflection
The firelight magnified our shadows, glinted off the silver, flickered high upon the walls; its reflection roared orange in the windowpanes as if a city were burning outside. The whoosh of the flames was like a flock of birds, trapped and beating in a whirlwind near the ceiling. And I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the long mahogany banquet table, draped in linen, laden with china and candles and fruit and flowers, had simply vanished into thin air, like a magic casket in a fairy story.
girl winter cities
They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover.
knowing never-quit gone
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.
oatmeal holes sock
No money, holes in my socks, living off oatmeal.
thinking fool doe
Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.
children emotional adults
Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.
writing admire maxwell
I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.
solitude
I really do work in solitude.
thinking murder found
Well, I think storytellers have always found murder a fascinating device.
children thinking adults
I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.
lonely mean writing
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.
reality grain
Beauty alters the grain of reality,
party eggs bird
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.