Donna Tartt

Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

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

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.

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

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

I really do work in solitude.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.