Donna Tartt Quotes
Bio | Bibliography | Rumors | News
She is so thoroughly well read that she is known to quote entire poems and passages from French novels at length in her slight Mississippi twang. In photos, she projects a ghostly mystery, her porcelain skin and black bob suggesting a cross between Anna Wintour and Oscar Wilde.
Writer Brings in the World While She Keeps It at Bay. (2013, Oct. 20). New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/books/donna-tartt-talks-a-bit-about-the-goldfinch.html.
“I don’t like to talk about my personal life,” she says, sitting in a chair in the corner of a hotel lobby.
Why?
“Why should I?” she asks, well, tartly.
Personal publicity, Tartt explains, is not just annoying; it’s actually injurious to a writer.
“It’s detrimental,” she says. “It’s actively harmful. It draws attention away from the books. The books are the important thing. I think that a writer’s life is very unimportant. The book is the important thing. I’m not an actress; it’s not my job to present myself as myself. Books are objects that stand on their own. There’s too much interest in text being interpreted in terms of the writer’s own or imaginary biography. Hemingway is a really good example. People think that they’ve got Hemingway’s number, that they know who he is, so they don’t bother to read his books anymore. Hemingway’s life was not the interesting or important thing about him; it was his books, that’s what he did.”
Famous and yet unknown. (2002, Dec 8). Michael J. Ybarra. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-dec-08-ca-ybarra8-story.html
Donna Tartt Quotes on...
- Androgyny
- Bennington
- Bibliophile
- Celebrity
- Childhood Memory
- Childhood
- Death
- Dogs
- Elitism
- Genius
- Glamour
- Introvert
- Legend
- Lolita
- Love
- Money
- Olemiss
- Politics
- Sleepytown
- Teaching
- Writing