Quotes from Tana French

I thought of Mark's reckless eyes—The only things I believe in are out on that there dig—and then of revolutionaries waving ragged, gallant banners, of refugees swimming swift nighttime currents; of all those who hold life so light, or the stakes so dear, that they can walk steady and open-eyed to meet the thing that will take or transform their lives and whose high cold criteria are far beyond our understanding.

There's absolutely no evidence to indicate that. There never is. Homicidal satanic cults are the detective's version of yetis; no one has ever seen one and there is no proof that they exist, but one big blurry footprint and the media turn into a gibbering, foaming pack, so we have to act as though we take the idea at least semi-seriously.

The Place would already have started the leisurely, enjoyable process of digesting her into just one more piece of local gore-lore, half ghost story and half morality play, half urban myth and half just the way life goes. It would eat her memory whole, the same way its ground had eaten her body.

It rains day and night, mildly but uncompromisingly, so Cal takes the desk inside and goes back to his wallpaper. He enjoys this rain. It has no aggression to it; its steady rhythm and the scents it brings in through the windows gentle the house's shabbiness, giving it a homey feel. He's learned to see the landscape changing under it, greens turning richer and wildflowers rising. It feels like an ally, rather than the annoyance it is in the city.

The pictures are good, Toby. They're good. But this is the only way, no one'll ever look twice if they come from me, I went to art school—

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.

Die Luft ist gehaltvoll wie Früchtebrot, als sollte man mehr mit ihr machen als sie nur einatmen, vielleicht ein großes Stück herausbeißen oder sie sich händeweise ins Gesicht reiben.

Die Berge am Horizont sehen aus, als hätte jemand ein Taschenmesser genommen und glatte Bögen aus dem sternsatten Himmel geschnitten, so dass nur leere Schwärze zurückbleibt.

memories are nothing, soft as gauze against the ruthless razor-fineness of that edge, beautiful and lethal, one tiny slip and it'll slice to the bone. It

I work Cold Cases. When we bring witnesses in, they want to believe this doesn't count: not really a murder investigation, not a proper one with guns and cuffs, nothing that'll slam through your life like a tornado. Something old and soft, instead, worn fuzzy round the edges.

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.

Above the front door the fanlight glowed blue, delicate as wing-bones.

The button developed a life of its own, swollen with symbolism, a single chance at salvation pulsing redly in the corner and if I blew it too soon or left it too late then I was lost.

I'd been expecting someone so nondescript he was practically invisible, maybe the Cancer Man from The X Files, but this guy had rough, blunt features and wide blue eyes, and the kind of presence that leaves heat streaks on the air where he's been.

Most people have no reason to know how memory can turn rogue and feral, becoming a force of its own and one to be reckoned with.

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don't have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker.

I said she's not thick, kid. I didn't say she was Professor fucking Moriarty.

If a guy's whole head is in reality, then reality is the only route we can take to get to him. If he's letting his mind prance off down dozens of twisty hypothetical fairy tales, every one of those is a crack we can use to prize him open.

two of the human race's greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature.

Every time you say no to your big brother, God kills a kitten. Come on.

Ask any economist: broke is made of how you feel. The credit crunch didn't happen because people woke up any poorer than they'd been the day before; it happened because people woke up scared.

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.

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.

I have no time for people who sigh about how quickly children grow up nowadays (my grandparents, after all, were working full-time by sixteen, which I think trumps any number of body piercings in the adulthood stakes),