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Donna Tartt

"I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur."

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"I think politics is deadly to write about, frankly. If you have a political agenda and you set out to write a novel to prove that, say, capitalism should crumble, then it's going to be a really bad novel. Very few people have been able to deal with political fiction - Dickens, Dostoyevsky. But even Tolstoy got really tiresome when he was talking about the serfs. You have to let characters be characters, not [gruff voice] Mr Capitalism or [girlie voice] Miss Anti-Fur."

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Amber Hurdle

"A writer writesregardless...even though...notwithstanding...despite...at any rate...anyhow...nevertheless...in the face of...undeterred by...heedless of...and because.The true writer simply continues to write."

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Amber Hurdle

"What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true."

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Amber Hurdle

"If you read something, what you have written you ain't gonna like it...- It sounds horrible... so write don't read your own stuff."

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Amber Hurdle

"If you want to be a good writer, internalize the good writers; absorb them; integrate with their souls; embrace their minds; mingle with their life stories; in short, merge with them, lose yourself in them!"

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Amber Hurdle

"This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."

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Amber Hurdle

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

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Amber Hurdle

"Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain."

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Amber Hurdle

"As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words.""Yes, that's right," I agreed."I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?"I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE."My interviewer looked surprised, as though he'd expected an impressive adjective or some rare verb. "That's your favorite word? Why?"I tried not to smirk. "Because."

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Amber Hurdle

"There are days when writing is within my power and a story unfolds along a course I've already chosen. And then there are days when the words breathe on their own and take me by the hand, leading me along unfathomed paths. Either way, the end result is this author's fairytale."

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Amber Hurdle

"I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel-to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience."

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Donna Tartt
"Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction."
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Donna Tartt
"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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Donna Tartt
"I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories."
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Donna Tartt
"Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time."
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Donna Tartt
"Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent."
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Donna Tartt
"Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life."
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Donna Tartt
"I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much."
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Donna Tartt
"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."
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Donna Tartt
"The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up."
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Donna Tartt
"Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality."
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