This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person, particul… - Donna Tartt

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.

I’m a bit of a lone wolf…I don’t give interviews or do publicity unless I have a book out—too distracting. My desk is where the real work happens.

Something I think you’re very conscious of growing up in the South is people who speak correctly and people who don’t…George Orwell said, ‘Englishmen are all branded on the tongue.’ It’s the same for southerners. I grew up around people who had wonderful, mellifluous voices; there’s also that twangy cracker accent. And then you were also aware of black English…