Quotes from Donna Tartt

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial

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.

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

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

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

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

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

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

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn't want to see.

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

The 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.

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

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

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

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

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

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.

I really do work in solitude.