Top 100 Tana's Quotes
#1. In the dream, Tana's mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death.
Holly Black
#2. But if you've seen a dead body, you know how they change the air: that huge silence, the absence strong as a black hole, time stopped and molecules frozen around the still thing that's learned the final secret, the one he can never tell.
Tana French
#3. I've got good psychopath sensors now. It's like an allergy: you get exposed once, from then on you're supersensitized." She
Tana French
#4. 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
#5. ... 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
#6. 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
#7. I'm only talking to one person here. If that's you, then you need to shut up and listen. If it's not, then you need to shut up because no one's talking to you.
Tana French
#8. Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.
Tana French
#9. Throughout history
even a hundred years ago, even fifty
it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, the danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it's contentment,
Tana French
#10. 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
#11. It came to her, all of a sudden, the words he'd said to her in Lance's house.
If I'm hurt, you must be very careful. No, Tana, you must listen. You must be careful of me.
He hadn't been worried he was going to get hurt. He'd been worried that he was going to hurt someone else.
Holly Black
#12. Once you have mates who know you, right down under the this-and-that you decide people want to see today, then there's no room left for the someday person who'll magic you into being all your finest dreams. You've turned solid:you're the person your mates know, forever.
Tana French
#13. I spent a lot of the holidays at Charlie's home in Herefordshire, learning to drive on his
Tana French
#14. This is the truth of bombed-out ruins: hit a city hard enough and the cheap arrogant veneer will crumble faster than you can snap your fingers; it's the old stuff, the stuff that's endured, that might just keep enduring. I
Tana French
#15. no matter how hard I try to stamp it down, part of me is picturing Sophie's guy cracking the password and coming up with both hands full of pics of Aislinn riding Cueball Lanigan, with Breslin counting cash in the background. "Let
Tana French
#16. Some stuff is gonna find a way to happen; once it's got started, you can't stop it no matter what you do.
Tana French
#17. Always fuck with people's expectations, sunshine. It's good for their circulation.
Tana French
#18. One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.
Tana French
#19. If I've learned one thing today, it's that teenage girls make Moriarty look like a babe in the woods. Detective Stephen Moran
Tana French
#20. Two of the human race's greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature.
Tana French
#21. It doesn't matter where you come from. There's nothing you can do about it, so don't waste your energy thinking about it. What matters is where you're going. And that, mate, is something you can control.
Tana French
#22. O'Kelly's disregard for cliche is so sweeping that it almost has its own panache. I find this entertaining or irritating or mildly comforting, depending on my mood, but at least it makes it very easy to prepare your script in advance.
Tana French
#23. Little mouse," a voice said through the keyhole. "Don't you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat's delight?
Holly Black
#24. It's not tiddlywinks now, is it?..... NZ Rugby Legend
Tana Umaga
#25. 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
#26. I said she's not thick, kid. I didn't say she was Professor fucking Moriarty.
Tana French
#27. I hate nostalgia, it's laziness with prettier accessories ...
Tana French
#28. Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?
Tana French
#29. 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
#30. When we left school, it was the early eighties. This country was on its knees. There were no jobs, none. If you couldn't go into Daddy's business, you emigrated or went on the dole. Even if you had the money and the points for college - and we didn't - that just put it off for a few years.
Tana French
#31. Her boarders are so hard and bright that these lumpy things are being blinded just by looking at her; she's opaque, she's impermeable, she's a million densities and dimensions more real than any of them. They break against her and roll off like mist.
Tana French
#32. People hurt each other. That's how it works. At least you were trying to do something good. Not everyone can say that much.
Tana French
#33. It meant nothing. Some people are like that: everything comes out like a lie. Not that they're brilliant liars, just that they're useless at telling the truth. You get left with no way to tell what's the real fake and what's the fake one.
Tana French
#34. I should've known the eyes. Wide, bright blue, and something about the delicate arc of the lids: a cat's slant, a pale jeweled girl in an old painting, a secret.
Tana French
#35. There's optimistic, and then there's plain crazy.
Tana French
#36. 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
#37. You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that's built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that.
Tana French
#38. But that age; remember that age? They're not the same. They don't put things together. That's why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don't make sense, when you're that age; you don't make sense. You stop expecting to.
Tana French
#39. 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
#40. Alison's mum has had a lot of plastic surgery and she wears fake eyelashes the size of hairbrushes. She looks sort of like a person but not really, like someone explained to aliens what a person is and they did their best to make one of their own.
Tana French
#41. Everyone's thought that: maybe even if, maybe we still could, maybe small bits of precious things can be salvaged. No one with cop-on thinks it after the first try. But her voice, quiet and sad, shimmering the air into those pearly colors: for a second I believed it, all over again.
Tana French
#42. Lexie's baby. Four weeks ... not quite a quarter of an inch: a tiny gemstone, a single spark of color slipping between your fingers and through the cracks and gone. A heart the size of a fleck of glitter and vibrating like a hummingbird, seeded with a billion things that would never happen now.
Tana French
#43. That was seven years ago. The doctors told her father the memory would fade, like the big messy scar on her arm, but neither ever did.
Holly Black
#44. You can be a rich scumbag just as easily as a poor scumbag, or you can be a decent human being either way. Money's got nothing to do with it. It's nice to have, but it's not what makes you who you are.
Tana French
#45. Is he going to- will he live?"
"No," said Gavriel. "No chance of that. He wants to die, so he will. But not tonight and not because of me."
"Oh," Tana said. "So he's okay?
Holly Black
#46. 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
#47. Then the pints will get further apart, and then one of us will get into a relationship and won't be around as much; the texts will start with Hey, too long no see, and all of a sudden we'll realize it's been a year since we met up. And
Tana French
#48. Self-immolation's a nice gesture, but it doesn't usually achieve very much.
Tana French
#49. Rory is fun when he's pissed off: like a fluffy little attack gerbil.
Tana French
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. The thing about old neighborhoods: people still mind each other's business.
Tana French
#54. 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
#56. Girlfriends aren't allowed to care if you have Stilton socks. Friends are." All the same, she gave her hands a quick, professional shake and took hold of my foot. "Plus, you might be less of a pain in the arse if you got more action.
Tana French
#57. People wonder whether I got my presenting job as a result of my own abilities or because of Gordon, which is a little unfair.
Tana Ramsay
#58. If it was true. This case was jammed with lies, couldn't grab hold of it without getting a handful.
Tana French
#59. That long sigh again, above us. This time I saw it, moving through the branches. Like the trees were listening; like they would've been sad about us, sad for us, only they'd heard it all so many thousand times before.
Tana French
#60. Mental' isn't a reason. It comes in an awful lot of flavors, most of them are non-violent, and every single one of them has some kind of logic, whether or not it makes sense to you and me.
Tana French
#61. someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too. Even the cute little student mincing along in her flowery dress, the shuffling old fella with his shuffling spaniel, they look Ebola-lethal. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I'm getting the flu.
Tana French
#62. Equality is paper-deep, peel it away with a fingernail.
Tana French
#63. Ah, dammit to hell and blast and nonspecific fornication" I said, when the rivet went shooting off into the grass again. "Is everyone OK with that?"
"What's wrong with nonspecific fornication?" Abby demanded. "I don't like my fornication specific.
Tana French
#64. Reminded myself: the ones you don't like are a bonus. They can't fool you as easy as the ones you do.
Tana French
#65. Underneath he has on jeans and a baggy beige jumper that's twenty quids' worth of knitted depression. "Let's
Tana French
#66. I put my time and energy into bringing answers, not hugs and hot chocolate.
Tana French
#67. 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
#68. You're yourself," Tana said, grinning. "More purely yourself than anyone I know. And if you can't see who that is anymore, then see yourself the way I see you.
Holly Black
#69. Interesting fact from the front lines: raw grief smells like ripped leaves and splintered branches, a jagged green shriek.
Tana French
#70. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl. At
Tana French
#71. 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
#72. They think you can't feel anything, because they've forgotten how. You're very, very dangerous, I get that, and you're prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don't let yourself mistake that for some kind of inner corruption. They see themselves in you and are blinded.
Holly Black
#73. He must have been handsome when he was alive and was handsome still, although made monstrous by his pallor and her awareness of what he was. His mouth looked soft, his cheekbones as sharp as blades, and his jaw curved, giving him an off-kilter beauty. His black hair a mad forest of dirty curls.
Holly Black
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. Have a good laugh at this, ... Deep down, I never for a second never thought they would find anything.
Tana French
#78. 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
#79. Aidan pulled against his bonds. "They keep talking to him in a whole bunch of languages. A lot of French. Something about the Thorn of Istra. I think he's in trouble."
"Are you?" Tana asked.
"Not exactly," said Gavriel.
Holly Black
#80. In my neighborhood, gossip is a competitive sport that's been raised to Olympic standard, and I never diss gossip; I revere it with all my heart.
Tana French
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. Smoked like it was fuel and he was going to get every last inch to the gallon.
Tana French
#84. Behind Tana there was the sounds of splintering wood, as though something very large had hot the door. "No," she said softly, "Oh no. No."
"Leave me," said Gavriel.
... "Shut up or I might," she told him.
Holly Black
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver.
Tana French
#88. 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
#89. I spend my days watching soap operas, eating bonbons and plotting society's downfall.
Tana French
#90. 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
#91. That's why we have rules to begin with, Richie: because you can't trust your mind to tell you what's right and wrong.
Tana French
#92. Boyle is a round, pancake-faced little oddball who gives you the impression that he has a room at home packed with disturbing magazines, neatly alphabetized, but he runs a scene impeccably
Tana French
#93. I'm not saying that owning a house makes life into some kind of blissful paradise; simply that it makes the difference between freedom and enslavement.
Tana French
#94. 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
#95. Seems like Death came back for me."
He grinned, a subtly odd grin that somehow made her smile back. "You drove him off again. Sleep, Tana. I will guard you from Death, for I have no fear of him. We have been adversaries for so long that we are closer than friends.
Holly Black
#96. The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, would have broken your heart.
Tana French
#97. And I didn't need telepathy, either. Ask any woman you're ever had a relationship with: I guarantee she knew she was second best. A placeholder, till the one you actually wanted came home.
Tana French
#98. I said I know my shot when I see it. Sometimes you don't even have to see it. Sometimes you feel it coming, screaming down the sky towards you like a meteor.
Tana French
#99. She came out of sleep like a thunderclap - waking from dreams so deep and dark that she couldn't remember anything but dirt and hands pulling her down into graves with cities inside them.
Holly Black
#100. I had started trying - it for the first time, really - it to remember what had happened in that wood. I prodded tentatively around the edges of it, barely acknowledging even to myself what I was doing, like a kid picking at a scab but afraid to look.
Tana French
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