#ch

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. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#emotional #more #much #murky #observation

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#admire #american #american writer #essay #finished

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#characters #dickens #even #i #i love

I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#decade #each #i #long #novels

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. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#command #consider #extends #grows #i

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#childhood #essential #first #i #inside

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#experience #into #just #kind #novel

At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary. ↗

— Allen Tate

#commentary #determined #gets #honor #i

Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment. ↗

— Allen Tate

#been #cherished #detachment #gather #genetic

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry. ↗

— Allen Tate

#come #does #geneticists #happen #how