Donna Tartt

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

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.

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.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

It's good to like yourself, and that only comes from hard work, from doing. But vanity is dangerous; it can trip you badly.

I just had an idea that went right over my head.