“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes—it’s a reductive way of looking at oneself and one’s work. Readers really participate in the writing of a book. As a writer I’m giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine. I have my own ideas, but once the book is out there it’s not really mine anymore, and my own idea isn’t any more valid than yours. And then I begin the long process of disengaging.”
On how writers should avoid analyzing their own work in “Donna Tartt on The Goldfinch, Inspiration, and the Perils of Literary Fame” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29022016/donna-tartt-goldfinch-interview/ in Town & Country (2019 Sep 12)
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Donna Tartt 64
American writer 1963Related quotes
“If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”
Book II, ch. 18.
Discourses
“I try to write to the story, as opposed to writing for the reader…”
On writing characters in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” https://comicsalliance.com/mariko-tamaki-pride-week-interview/ in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)
Geek Speak Magazine Interview (2010)
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 322
“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”
Source: The Marriage Plot
On how her short story writing style has evolved in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews
As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)
On being a writer in “Both Freedom and Constraint: An Interview with Randa Abdel-Fattah” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/both-freedom-and-constraint-an-interview-with in Words Without Borders (May 2015)