626 Quotes by Donna Tartt

Things would have been terribly strange and unbalanced without her. She was the Queen who finished out the suit of dark Jacks, dark King, and Joker.

In New York, everything reminded me of my mother – every taxi, every street corner, every cloud that passed over the sun – but out in this hot mineral emptiness, it was as if she had never existed; I could not even imagine her spirit looking down on me. All trace of her seemed burned away in the thin desert air.

It’s hard for me to show work while I’m writing, because other people’s comments will influence what happens.

And it’s a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves, to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But that is a mistake.

Picasso says. ‘Bad artists copy, good artists steal.

We were heading into the clumsy territory of my mother’s funeral, stretched-out silences, wrong smiles, the place where words didn’t work.

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

Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature – fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

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