“Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and...” — Donna Tartt Quote

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time.

There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

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.

Politicians aren't special. They lie the same way we all do, revealing their true nature under pressure.

I think you can never ever lie, ever. If you don't know, say, 'I don't know'.

You can't lie to the fans. They know what they want to see.

We can't control it, and we've basically quit trying. People are going to talk, and people are going to lie.

A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.