Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

- Donna Tartt

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 researc…

- Donna Tartt

And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘rea…

- Donna Tartt

I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.

- Donna Tartt

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

- Donna Tartt

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

- Donna Tartt

The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room…

- Donna Tartt

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

- Donna Tartt

Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

- Donna Tartt