Tana French Quotes

Quotes about:

Acting Books Heart Nostalgia Wall Writing

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.

Tana French

Baby, Strong Women, Blow

"Faithful Place". Book by Tana French, August 19, 2010.

46 Copy quote
Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their décor, their clothes, everything – taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life. Never to be satisfied. If you are perfectly happy with what you got, especially if what you got isn’t even all the spectacular then you’re dangerous. You’re breaking all the rules. You’re undermining the sacred economy. You’re challenging every assumption that society is built on.

Tana French

Home, Clothes, People

14 Copy quote
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

Hurt, Fall, Thinking

7 Copy quote
Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.

Tana French

People, Poison, Wrecks

17 Copy quote
I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.

Tana French

Fear, Heart, Dark

11 Copy quote
But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.

Tana French

Hands, Giving, May

4 Copy quote
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

Long, Want, Pay

4 Copy quote
Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.

Tana French

Worry, Anxiety, Mazes

11 Copy quote
Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

Tana French

Needs, Discouraged, Coming Out

6 Copy quote
A bore or an uggo might manage not to get up anyone's nose, but if a girl's got brains and looks and personality, she's going to piss someone off, somewhere along the way.

Tana French

Girl, Personality, Brain

Tana French (2010). “Faithful Place: Dublin Murder Squad: 3”, p.136, Hachette UK

10 Copy quote
Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.

Tana French

Couple, Cutting, Forever

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.176, Hachette UK

8 Copy quote
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

Book, Reading, Kids

5 Copy quote
We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.

Tana French

Exercise, Thinking, Cereal

8 Copy quote
For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be alright.

Tana French

Stars, Fall, Black

6 Copy quote
You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.

Tana French

Bones, Like You, Our Family

4 Copy quote
Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?

Tana French

Needs, Too Much, Get Away

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

10 Copy quote
I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

Tana French

Missing, Lost, Found

Tana French (2008). “The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2”, p.51, Hachette UK

6 Copy quote
What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.

Tana French

Lying, Moving, Glasses

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

6 Copy quote
If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right once.

Tana French

Needs, Fifty, Nine

5 Copy quote
I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop on women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds?

Tana French

Jobs, Flower, Blow

8 Copy quote
When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them

Tana French

People, And Love, Too Much

4 Copy quote
I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had.

Tana French

Crazy, Missing, Nostalgia

4 Copy quote
I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack

Tana French

People, Knack, Talent

15 Copy quote
I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.

Tana French

Caught, Mundane

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.339, Hachette UK

4 Copy quote
Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.

Tana French

Hard, Ifs

"The Likeness". Book by Tana French, 2008.

4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Tana French

Follow

Born: 1973
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics