Donna Tartt American Novelist Quotations

People always want to call me a Southern writer but though I grew up in the South, I don't feel that the label quite fits my work.

There's also a bit of family echo in the character of Harriet. Harriet is kind of a recurring state of mind in my mother's side of the family.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

The trick of creating character is to try to see all people, even unsympathetic ones, without projecting one's own personality and values on them.