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"It's a long story. I'll make it short as I can."

Donna Tartt, American Novelist

Brevity, Storytelling, Economy, Communication, Clarity

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"It's a long story. I'll make it short as I can."

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"It's a long story. I'll make it short as I can."

Donna Tartt, American Novelist

Brevity, Storytelling, Economy, Communication, Clarity

Explore more quotes by Donna Tartt

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

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

"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."

"Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties."

"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."

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

"Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction."

"But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know."

"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."

"So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter."

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