Tana French Quotes - Page 2

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Acting Books Heart Nostalgia Wall Writing

We think of mortality so little these days... I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones. Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I: As I am so will you be.

Tana French

Determination, Tombstone, Thinking

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I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos - so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.

Tana French

Book, Thinking, Years

"In the Woods". Book by Tana French, January 30, 2007.

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People you knew when you were teenagers, the ones who saw your stupidest haircut and the most embarrassing things you've done in your life, and they still cared about you after all that: they're not replaceable, you know?

Tana French

Teenager, People, Done

Tana French (2012). “Broken Harbour: Dublin Murder Squad: 4. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction Book of the Year”, p.287, Hachette UK

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People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.

Tana French

Self, People, Giving

"In the Woods". Book by Tana French, 2008.

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I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there.

Tana French

Writing, Needs, Way

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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

Heart, Years, Faces

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Sarte was right, Hell is other people

Tana French

People, Hell

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The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

Tana French

Historical, Fiction, Mystery

"Tana French: I'm haunted by Ireland's ghost estates" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. July 27, 2012.

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You start admiring someone who's famous for actually doing something---imagine that---and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend my own time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine.

Tana French

Thinking, Achievement, Brain

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I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day.

Tana French

Writing, Lucky, Feels

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When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

Tana French

Character, Creating, Acting

"Tana French: I'm haunted by Ireland's ghost estates" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. July 27, 2012.

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But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk of the edge of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.

Tana French

Journey, Hands, People

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When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.

Tana French

Together, Pieces, Shapes

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Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.

Tana French

People, Missing, Sometimes

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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

People, World, Wrecks

Tana French (2010). “Faithful Place: Dublin Murder Squad: 3”, p.428, Hachette UK

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Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.

Tana French

Years, Class, Work Out

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I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect. My gift, or fatal flaw, is for nostalgia. I have sometimes been accused of demanding perfection, of rejecting heart's desires as soon as I get close enough that the mysterious impressionistic gloss disperses into plain solid dots, but the truth is less simplistic than that. I know very well that perfection is made up of frayed, off-struck mundanities. I suppose you could say my real weakness is a kind of long-sightedness: usually it is only at a distance, and much too late, that I can see the pattern.

Tana French

Distance, Real, Heart

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If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.

Tana French

Writing, Character, Views

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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

Religious, Needs, Belief

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... I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.

Tana French

Running, Fall, Fighting

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It's easy to slide into believing you're the hypnotist here, the mirage master, the smart cookie who knows what's real and how all the tricks are done. The fact is you're still just another slack-jawed mark in the audience. No matter how good you are, this world is always going to be better at this game. It's more cunning than you are, it's faster and it's a whole lot more ruthless. All you can do is try to keep up, know your weak spots and never stop expecting the sucker punch.

Tana French

Real, Smart, Believe

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Some people should never meet.

Tana French

People, Should

Tana French (2010). “Faithful Place: Dublin Murder Squad: 3”, p.383, Hachette UK

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We had no one else to learn this from- none of our parents were shining examples of relationship success- so we learned this from each other: when someone you love needs you to, you can get a hold of your five-alarm temper, get a hold of the shapeless things that scare you senseless, act like an adult instead of the Cro-Magnon teenager you are, you can do a million things you never saw coming.

Tana French

Fear, Teenager, Shining

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I am, of course, romanticizing; a chronic tendency of mine.

Tana French

Tendencies, Courses, Mines

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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

Girl, Reality, Light

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Tana French

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Born: 1973
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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