“In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extende...” — Donna Tartt Quote

“In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.”

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.”

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

“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.”

“Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent.”

“I think that Twitter is a useful reporting tool sometimes, but an utterly toxic swamp that nonetheless I engage in more than I probably should.”

“My job is to engage, entertain, work out my life, tell a certain truth.”

“I don't want to engage in politics; it's too hot.”

“I've always been interested in how other people live their lives, which is why it's important to engage fully even in painful times. And out of that, I get to laugh.”

“A thriller needs to hold the interest of the reader from the very beginning. It needs to engage with them, hold them in rapt attention, and prevent them from putting down the book.”

“As a politician, I engage with all kinds of opinions irrespective of whether they are in the media or not.”