Tana French Quotes

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Pubs have always been the heart of Irish social life, but when the smoking ban came in, a lot of people moved to drinking at home. The ban doesn't bother me, although I'm confused by the idea that you shouldn't go into a pub and do anything that might be bad for you, but the level of obedience does. To the Irish, rules always used to count as challenges - see who can come up with the best way round this one - and this sudden switch to sheep mode makes me worry that we're turning into someone else, possibly Switzerland.
Tana French Quotes: Pubs have always been the
He was like a huge smug albatross waddling around my desk, squawking vacuously and crapping all over my paperwork.
Tana French Quotes: He was like a huge
The thing about old neighborhoods: people still mind each other's business.
Tana French Quotes: The thing about old neighborhoods:
... what you get out of life is mostly what you planted. Not always, no, but mostly. If you think you're a success, you will be a success; if you think you deserve nothing but crap, you'll get nothing but crap. Your inner reality shapes your outer one, every day of your life. Do you follow me?
Tana French Quotes: ... what you get out
Breakfast was the full whammy: eggs, rashers, sausages, black pudding, fried bread, fried tomatoes. This was clearly some kind of statement, but I couldn't work out whether it was See, we're doing just grand without you, or I'm still slaving my fingers to the bone for you even though you don't deserve it, or possibly We'll be even when this lot gives you a heart attack.
Tana French Quotes: Breakfast was the full whammy:
Trust your instincts, Dad always says. If something feels dodgy to you, if someone feels dodgy, you go with dodgy. Don't give the benefit of the doubt because you want to be a nice person, don't wait and see in case you look stupid. Safe comes first. Second could be too late.
Tana French Quotes: Trust your instincts, Dad always
I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day.
Tana French Quotes: I love writing. I feel
If you let other people decide what you think about something like that, if you just follow along because it's trendy, then who are you? When the flock changes direction tomorrow, what, you just throw away everything you think and start over, because other people said so? Then what are you, underneath? You're nothing. You're no one.
Tana French Quotes: If you let other people
Even at moments like this, there is a limit to how weird I am prepared to appear.
Tana French Quotes: Even at moments like this,
This girl: she bent reality around her like a lens bending light, she pleated it into so many flickering layers that you could never tell which one you were looking at, the longer you stared the dizzier you got.
Tana French Quotes: This girl: she bent reality
I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.
Tana French Quotes: I had been right: freedom
How's Alison getting on?'

Conway snorted. 'Tucked up in the sick room like she's dying in some season finale. Little fadey voice on her and all. She's having a great old time.
Tana French Quotes: How's Alison getting on?'<br /><br
If you care more about them than they do about you, they hate you for it.
Tana French Quotes: If you care more about
For some reason the past - any of our pasts - was solidly off-limits. They were like the creepy rabbits in Watership Down who won't answer any questions beginning with "Where.
Tana French Quotes: For some reason the past
Wayne," I said to Cassie, while we were getting him a Sprite and watching him pick his acne in the one-way glass. "Why didn't his parents just tattoo 'Nobody in my family has ever finished secondary school' on his forehead at birth?
Tana French Quotes: Wayne,
I was never afraid of getting killed and I was never afraid of losing my nerve. My kind of courage holds up best under fire; it's different dangers, more refined and insidious ones, that shake me.
Tana French Quotes: I was never afraid of
I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there.
Tana French Quotes: I came from a house
Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.
Tana French Quotes: Sometimes, when you're close to
This case was too full of skewed, slippery parallels, and I couldn't shake the uneasy sense that they were somehow deliberate. Every coincidence felt like a sea-worn bottle slammed down on the sand at my feet, with my name engraved neatly on the glass and inside a message in some mockingly indecipherable code.
Tana French Quotes: This case was too full
I said she's not thick, kid. I didn't say she was Professor fucking Moriarty.
Tana French Quotes: I said she's not thick,
Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.
Tana French Quotes: Human beings, as I know
When you look at someone you knew when you were young, you always see the person you first met,
Tana French Quotes: When you look at someone
Some part of me believed, unassailably, and wordlessly and perhaps with a flick of justice, that they had sent me away because they were afraid of me. Like some monstrously deformed child who should never have lived beyond infancy, or a conjoined twin whose other half died under the knife, I had- simply by surviving-become a freak of nature.
Tana French Quotes: Some part of me believed,
Some people should never meet.
Tana French Quotes: Some people should never meet.
I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down.
Tana French Quotes: I don't do that kind
Voices tossed up and down the long flights of stairs, sourceless and intertwining like crickets' chorus, gentle as fingers on my hair. Night, they said, good night, sleep well. Welcome back, Lexie. Yes, welcome back. Good night. Sweet dreams.
Tana French Quotes: Voices tossed up and down
the room looks like it was bought through some Decorate Your Home app where you plug in your budget and your favorite colors and the whole thing arrives in a van the next day. In
Tana French Quotes: the room looks like it
I always figured nerves were for Jane Austen characters and helium-voiced girls who never buy their round; I would no more have turned shaky in a crisis than I would have carried smelling salts around in my reticule.
Tana French Quotes: I always figured nerves were
My body my mind the way I dress the way I walk the way I talk, mine all mine.
Tana French Quotes: My body my mind the
Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.
Tana French Quotes: Maybe she, like me, would
I've got this theory that human beings are innately religious; we have a belief system. It doesn't have to be a theist form, necessarily. But we need a belief system, some framework on which to hang our behavior.
Tana French Quotes: I've got this theory that
When you're a little kid, you think people are just one thing; but then you get older, and you realize it's not that simple. Chris wasn't that simple. He was cruel and he was kind. And he didn't like realizing that. It bothered him, that he wasn't just one thing. It made him feel fragile. Like he could break into pieces any time, because he didn't know how to hold himself together. That was why he did that with those other girls, went with them and kept it secret: so he could try out being different things and see how it felt, and he'd be safe. He could be as lovely as he wanted or as horrible as he wanted, and it wouldn't count, because no one else would ever know.
Tana French Quotes: When you're a little kid,
Two of the human race's greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature.
Tana French Quotes: Two of the human race's
And then there's its hair," Justin said, pushing the vegetables across to me. "Don't forget the hair. It's horrible."
"It's wearing a dead person's hair," Rafe informed me. "If you stick a pin in the doll, you can hear screaming coming from the graveyard. Try it."
"See what I mean?" Abby said, to me. "Wusses. It's got real hair. Why he thinks it's from a dead person - "
"Because your poppet was made in about 1890 and I can do subtraction.
Tana French Quotes: And then there's its hair,
The smell of the sea swept over the wall and in through the empty window-hole, wide and wild with a million intoxicating secrets. I don't trust that smell. It hooks us somewhere deeper than reason or civilization, in the fragments of our cells that rocked in oceans before we had minds, and it pulls till we follow mindlessly as rutting animals ... It lures us to leap off high cliffs, fling ourselves on towering waves, leaves behind everyone we love and face into thousands of miles of open water for the sake of what might be on the far shore.
Tana French Quotes: The smell of the sea
Privately, I consider religion to be a load of bollocks, but when you have a sobbing five year old wanting to know what happened to her hamster, you develop an instant belief in anything that dissolves some of the heartbreak off her face.
Tana French Quotes: Privately, I consider religion to
She doesn't approve of either sentimentality or graveyard humor at crime scenes. She says they waste time that should be spent working on the damn case, but the implication is that coping strategies are for wimps.
Tana French Quotes: She doesn't approve of either
Murder is the thoroughbred stable. Murder is a shine and a dazzle, a smooth ripple like honed muscle, take your breath away. Murder is a brand on your arm, like an elite army unit's, like a gladiator's, saying for all your life: One of us. The finest.
Tana French Quotes: Murder is the thoroughbred stable.
I love beautiful; always have. I never saw why I should hate what I wish I had. Love it harder. Work your way closer. Clasp your hands around it tighter. Till you find a way to make it yours.
Tana French Quotes: I love beautiful; always have.
Now it seems obvious, of course, that even a strong person has weak spots and that I had hit Cassie's full force, with all the precision of a jeweler fragmenting a stone along a flaw. She must have thought, sometimes, of her namesake, the votary branded with her god's most inventive and sadistic curse: to tell the truth, and never to be believed.
Tana French Quotes: Now it seems obvious, of
For one last second, I saw them again the way I had that evening: a golden apparition on the front steps, shining and poised like young warriors stepped out of some lost myth, heads lifted, too bright to be real.
Tana French Quotes: For one last second, I
I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.
Tana French Quotes: I am not good at
It totally was elitist,' Julia says. 'So? There's nothing wrong with elitist. Some stuff is better than other stuff; pretending it's not doesn't make you open-minded, it just makes you a dick.
Tana French Quotes: It totally was elitist,' Julia
The overhead light streaked
Tana French Quotes: The overhead light streaked
The squealing little arse-gerbil.
Tana French Quotes: The squealing little arse-gerbil.
give my family an inch and they'll move into your house and start redecorating.
Tana French Quotes: give my family an inch
I laid a hand on his cheek; it was so bright that for a second I thought it was burning me, a pure painless fire.
Tana French Quotes: I laid a hand on
Nobody knows you like people you grew up with.
Tana French Quotes: Nobody knows you like people
When I think about the Spain case, from deep inside endless nights, this is the moment I remember. Everything else, every other slip and stumble along the way, could have been redeemed. This is the one I clench tight because of how sharp it slices. Cold still air, a weak ray of sun glowing on the wall outside the window, smell of stale bread and apples.
Tana French Quotes: When I think about the
My ribs opened up like windows, I'd forgotten you could breathe that deeply.
Tana French Quotes: My ribs opened up like
Nothing in this world takes over your blood like a murder case, nothing demands you, mind and body, with such a huge and blazing and irresistible voice.
Tana French Quotes: Nothing in this world takes
Sam's shoulders shifted. He thought Frank was just being smart-arsed. but Sam's never done undercover, he had no way of knowing: undercovers are different: there's nothing they won't do, to themselves or anyone else, to take their guy down. There was no point arguing on this one because he meant what he said: if his kid were killed, he would take it without a murmur. It's one of the most powerful lures of undercover, the ruthlessness, no borderlines: strong stuff, strong enough to take your breath away.It's one of the reasons I left.
Tana French Quotes: Sam's shoulders shifted. He thought
I've only got a handful of memories, and I don't want them wearing away, textures rubbing smooth, colors fading from overexposure. When I take them out, once in a blue moon, I need them bright enough to catch my breath and sharp enough to cut.
Tana French Quotes: I've only got a handful
Selena feels the hidden things thinning away to black veils you could pop with a fingertip, puddling into harmless sleep on the ground.
Tana French Quotes: Selena feels the hidden things
I had always felt that I was an observer, never a participant; that I was watching from behind a thick glass wall as people went about the business of living
and did it with such ease, with a skill that they took for granted and that I had never known.
Tana French Quotes: I had always felt that
When you stop being a kid, you lose your one chance at that too-tender-to-touch gold, that breathtaken everything and forever. Once you start growing up and getting sense, the outside world turns real, and your own private world is never everything again.
Tana French Quotes: When you stop being a
Don't fool yourself: we all have a cruel streak. We keep it under lock and key either because we're afraid of getting punished or because we believe this will somehow make a difference, make the world a better place.
Tana French Quotes: Don't fool yourself: we all
Sarte was right, Hell is other people
Tana French Quotes: Sarte was right, Hell is
She wants to leap up and do a handstand, or get someone to race her fast and far to wreck them both: anything that will turn her body back into something that's about what it can do, not all about how it looks.
Tana French Quotes: She wants to leap up
Daniel's voice brushed along my cheek like dark feathers, like a long night wind coming down from some far mountain. Take what you want and pay for it, says God.
Tana French Quotes: Daniel's voice brushed along my
In the hazy afternoon light through the windows he looked beautiful and dissolute, shirt open at the collar and streaks of golden hair falling into his eyes, like some Regency buck after a long night's dancing.
Tana French Quotes: In the hazy afternoon light
If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn't forgive her for being hurt.
Tana French Quotes: If she had hurt me,
Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.
Tana French Quotes: Her forehead was a maze
there are deep stubborn veins of nostalgia for the 1950s (even among people my age; in much of Ireland the fifties didn't end until 1995, when we skipped straight to Thatcher's eighties),
Tana French Quotes: there are deep stubborn veins
Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other's heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway.
Tana French Quotes: Most people are only too
The corners of Cooper's mouth tucked in, which is as close as he gets to a smile. He said, "Do come in.
Tana French Quotes: The corners of Cooper's mouth
This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form.
Tana French Quotes: This watching through cool intent
I'm not the type to look back over my shoulder, or at least I try hard not to be. Gone is gone; pretending anything else is a waste of time.
Tana French Quotes: I'm not the type to
Take what you want and pay for it, says God. You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and you will have to pay it.
Tana French Quotes: Take what you want and
If you, like me, are essentially a city person, then the chances are that when you imagine a wood you picture a simple thing: matching green trees in even rows, a soft carpet of dead leaves or pine needles, orderly as a child's drawing. Possibly those earnestly efficient man-made woods are in fact like that; I wouldn't know.
Tana French Quotes: If you, like me, are
All those years of endless excruciating therapy sessions, of staying vigilant over every move and word and thought; I had been sure I was mended, all the breaks healed, all the blood washed away. I knew I had earned my way to safety. I had believed, beyond any doubt, that that meant I was safe.
Tana French Quotes: All those years of endless
There was something intoxicating about this. I kept wanting to laugh, just at the lavish giddy freedom of it: relatives and countries and possibilities spread out in front of me and I could pick whatever I wanted, I could grow up in a palace in Bhutan with seventeen brothers and sisters and a personal chauffeur if I felt like it.
Tana French Quotes: There was something intoxicating about
All that St. Kilda's gloss, that walk through old oak doors like you belong, effortless: I wanted that. I wanted to lick it off my banged-up fists along with my enemy's blood. This
Tana French Quotes: All that St. Kilda's gloss,
Interesting fact from the front lines: raw grief smells like ripped leaves and splintered branches, a jagged green shriek.
Tana French Quotes: Interesting fact from the front
They are forever, a brief and mortal forever, a forever that will grow into their bones and be held inside them after it ends, intact, indestructible.
Tana French Quotes: They are forever, a brief
And our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.
Tana French Quotes: And our footsteps rang and
Have a good laugh at this, ... Deep down, I never for a second never thought they would find anything.
Tana French Quotes: Have a good laugh at
The department shrink spent weeks trying to convince me I was deeply traumatized, but eventually he had to give up, admit I was fine (sort of regretfully; he doesn't get a lot of stabbed cops to play with, I think he was hoping I would have some kind of fancy complex) and let me go back to work.
Tana French Quotes: The department shrink spent weeks
What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this
two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Tana French Quotes: What I am telling you,
There was a great jagged hole where they had ripped out the fireplace; the wall around it was crowded with faded graffiti explain who loved who, who was gay and who should fuck off.
Tana French Quotes: There was a great jagged
The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.
Tana French Quotes: The sudden, painful flare of
Frank told me once
and I don't know whether he's right or not, and I didn't tell Sam this either
that all the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere.
Tana French Quotes: Frank told me once<br>and I
I threw flips and cartwheels straight across the grass, fuck my imaginary stitches, fuck whether Lexie had done gymnastics, I couldn't remember the last time I had been this drunk and I loved it. I wanted to dive deeper into it and never come up for air, open my mouth and take a huge breath and drown on this night
Tana French Quotes: I threw flips and cartwheels
A breath of sound across the landing, almost imperceptible, like a shadow moving against blackness; then nothing.
Tana French Quotes: A breath of sound across
I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails?
Tana French Quotes: I felt different, changing. Like
Equality is paper-deep, peel it away with a fingernail.
Tana French Quotes: Equality is paper-deep, peel it
You can't make a person, a human being with a first kiss and a sense of humor and a favorite sandwich, and then expect her to dissolve back into scribbled notes and whiskeyed coffee when she no longer suits your purposes. I think I always knew she would come back to find me, someday.
Tana French Quotes: You can't make a person,
In the moment when that glass passed from his hand to mine, something sent up a high wild warning cry in the back of my mind. Persephone's irrevocable pomegranate seeds, Never take food from strangers; old stories where one sip or bite seals the spellbound walls forever, dissolves the road home into mist and blows it away on the wind.
Tana French Quotes: In the moment when that
I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn't change who I am. This isn't something I'm proud of; as far as I'm concerned, it's a bare minimum baseline requirement for calling yourself an adult human being, somewhere around the level of knowing how to do your own washing or change a toilet roll. All those idiots on the websites, begging for other people to pull their sagging puppet-strings, turn them real: they make me want to spit.
Tana French Quotes: I live inside my own
She was wearing combat trousers and a wine-colored woollen sweater with sleeves that came down past her wrists, and clunky runners, and I put this down as affectation: Look, I'm too cool for your conventions. The spark of animosity this ignited increased my attraction to her. There is a side of me that is most intensely attracted to women who annoy me.
Tana French Quotes: She was wearing combat trousers
a cipher, composed entirely of the jumbled reflections of what he thinks other people want to see.
Tana French Quotes: a cipher, composed entirely of
I looked at the back of Jessica's silky bent head and thought of those old stories where one twin is hurt and the other, miles away, feels the pain. I wondered if there had been a moment, during that giggly girls' night at Auntie Vera's, when she had made some small, unnoticed sound; if all the answers we wanted were locked away behind the strange dark gateways of her mind.
Tana French Quotes: I looked at the back
... out here in the real world, my man, you would be amazed how seldom murder has to break into people's lives. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it gets there because they open the door and invite it in.
Tana French Quotes: ... out here in the
In some ways grief anonymizes as powerfully as a Greek tragedy mask.
Tana French Quotes: In some ways grief anonymizes
Rory is fun when he's pissed off: like a fluffy little attack gerbil.
Tana French Quotes: Rory is fun when he's
I spent a lot of the holidays at Charlie's home in Herefordshire, learning to drive on his
Tana French Quotes: I spent a lot of
The shot of cold air hits Becca like it's been fired straight through the glass from the huge outside, wild and magic, pungent with foxes and juniper.
Tana French Quotes: The shot of cold air
I love the unspoken dress code.
Tana French Quotes: I love the unspoken dress
Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.
Tana French Quotes: Now that's a concept that's
sussed you or you're not going to get anywhere, wind it
Tana French Quotes: sussed you or you're not
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