I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for. – Donna Tartt
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. – Donna Tartt
But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know. – Donna Tartt
The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that theyre learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences. – Donna Tartt
Im 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, Id only be 48. Thats the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40. – James Thurber