Latest Donna Tartt Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Lexical variety, eccentric constructions and punctuation, variant spellings, archaisms, the ability to pile clause on clause, the effortless incorporation of words from other languages: flexibility, and inclusiveness, is what makes English great; and diversity is what keeps it healthy and growing, exuberantly regenerating itself with rich new forms and usages.

  Donna Tartt

  Diversity, Healthy, Growing

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

• Shakespearean words, foreign words, slang and dialect and made-up phrases from kids on the street corner: English has room for them all. And writers - not just literary writers, but popular writers as well - breathe air into English and keep it lively by making it their own, not by adhering to some style manual that gets handed out to college Freshmen in a composition class.

  Donna Tartt

  Kids, College, Air

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

• Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

  Donna Tartt

  Criticism, Important, Timing

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

• 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.

• 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.

  Donna Tartt

  Party, Eggs, Bird

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

• 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.

• 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.

• I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because "no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view."

  Donna Tartt

  Successful, Views, Editors

  "Donna Tartt and Michael Pietsch". Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

• I'd always rather stand or fall on my own mistakes. There's nothing worse than looking back, in a published book, at a line edit or a copy edit that you felt queasy about and didn't want to take, but took anyway.

  Donna Tartt

  Mistake, Book, Fall

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