Quotes from Tana French

Vicky always did have that kind of mind: since there was basically no activity going on inside her head, conversations went in there and came back out virtually untouched.

A Retir'd Friendship Here let us sit and bless our Starres Who did such happy quiet give, As that remov'd from noise of warres. In one another's hearts we live. Why should we entertain a feare? Love cares not how the world is turn'd. If crouds of dangers should appeare, Yet friendship can be unconcern'd. We weare about us such a charme, No horrour can be our offence; For mischief's self can doe no harme To friendship and to innocence. Katherine Philips

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.

It's occurred to him that he might have an undiscovered talent for letting things be.

faster," Trey says, over his shoulder. "Don't give it a chance to get holda you." "This is as fast as I go. Not all of us are built like jackrabbits." "Moose, more like." "You remember what I told you about manners?" Cal demands. Trey snorts and keeps moving. They pass between gorse bushes, around old turf-cutting scars, under a sheer cliffside where tufts of

When she was a little kid she would trot along holding his hand and tell him everything, good and bad, it all poured straight from her heart to her mouth. He can't remember when that changed.

The place makes it clear that whoever lives there has only themselves to please.

If it was true. This case was jammed with lies, couldn't grab hold of it without getting a handful.

you take someone down a peg, always give him a way to climb back up.

Dublin was built for pedestrians and carriages, not for cars; it's full of tiny winding medieval streets, rush hour lasts from seven in the morning till eight at night, and at the first hint of bad weather the whole city goes into prompt, thorough gridlock.

Manners is treating people with respect.

I crave truth. And I lie.

I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other's hands.

If you need a few tips on coping, ask me now.

I could get a fedora and a trench coat and a wisecracking sense of humor; she could sit poised at hotel bars with a slinky red dress and a camera in her lipstick, to snare cheating businessmen…. I almost laughed out loud.

What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this—two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

I wish I could show you how an interrogation can have its own beauty, shining and cruel as that of a bullfight; how in defiance of the crudest topic or the most moronic suspect it keeps inviolate its own taut, honed grace, its own irresistible and blood-stirring rhythms; how the great pairs of detectives know each other's every thought as surely as lifelong ballet partners

In Cal's view, morals involve something more than terminology. Ben damn near lost his mind over the importance of using the proper terms for people in wheelchairs, and he clearly felt pretty proud of himself for doing that, but he didn't mention ever doing anything useful for one single person in one single wheelchair, and Cal would bet a year's pension that the little twerp would have brought it up if he had.

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.

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

Various therapists and psychiatrists have diagnosed various things along the way, but what it comes down to is that Dina is no good at life. It takes a knack that she's never quite got hold of.

They brought in a mandatory sensitivity training session—which was fine by Cal, given the way some of the guys treated, for example, witnesses from bad hoods and rape victims, except the session turned out to be all about what words they were and weren't allowed to use; nothing about what they were doing, underneath all the words, and how they could do it better.

The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Plough, Orion's belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. 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 nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right.

Knocknaree wood was the real thing, and it was more intricate and more secretive than I had remembered. It had its own order, its own fierce battles and alliances. I was an intruder here, now, and I had a deep prickling sense that my presence had instantly been marked and that the wood was watching me, with an equivocal collected gaze, not yet accepting or rejecting; reserving judgement.