Donna Tartt Character Quotations

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction

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

The trick of creating character is to try to see all people, even unsympathetic ones, without projecting one's own personality and values on them.

There's also a bit of family echo in the character of Harriet. Harriet is kind of a recurring state of mind in my mother's side of the family.