A Quote by Donna Tartt

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it. — © Donna Tartt
You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.
In a discussion of this kind our interest should be centered not on the weight of the authority but on the weight of the argument. Indeed the authority of those who set out to teach is often an impediment to those who wish to learn. They cease to use their own judgment and regard as gospel whatever is put forward by their chosen teacher.
Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during that span. Consequently it has, I think, greater emotional power than a novel because of this real-time effect. Stories can stun you.
A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.
MYOB - mind your own body. It's important because I don't happen to have the kind of body that we usually see on television and in films. I am plus-size. I have dark skin. And I am 100 percent beautiful. But I get a lot of flak - oh, you should lose weight. And now that I have lost weight - and I lost weight for health reasons - I get, you look good but don't lose too much weight because your face is starting to sink in.
A reputation takes years and years and years to build, and it takes one press of a button to ruin it. Don't let that happen to you. You've done so much work; you've put in so much effort. Don't let one moment ruin your entire life because you wanted to be funny or you were mad or because you had a mood.
Despite its challenges, the novel offers an opportunity to live in one story for years of your imaginative life. There's a tremendous richness to that.
A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.
Socialism and communism fall of their own weight because, as Margaret Thatcher said, you run out of other people's money. Because socialized medicine never falls of its own weight because you put people on lists, and they die waiting to get the treatment and care. So you don't go broke.
Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.
I won't say he [Shakespeare] 'invented' us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling-about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly 'other' to us-are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives.
I say that I'm genetically gifted. In a weight-governed sport, I don't put weight on because of my Polish 'heritage, it's genetic. Even when I am not in training, I don't put on weight. When I start training, I don't need to take a lot of weight off.
Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your experience helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind.
I think a person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave. Work begins when you don't like what you're doing. There's a wise saying: make your hobby your source of income. Then there's no such thing as work, and there's no such thing as getting tired. That's been my own experience. I did just what I wanted to do. It takes a little courage at first, because who the hell wants you to do just what you want to do; they've all got lots of plans for you. But you can make it happen.
In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.
The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give. Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don't simply go on wasting it.
I never really put pressure on myself to make things seem new and spontaneous, mostly because I think everything is kind of derivative at this point. I enjoy the old-fashioned idea of like, His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby, those old movies. Those relationships are kind of where I've gotten inspiration for this character and this relationship. But I think what makes it new is just the words coming out of my mouth personally, and my take on it based on my own personal life experience is hopefully going to add something a little different, and add some flavor to it.
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