Quotes from Tana French

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.

Have a good laugh at this, ... Deep down, I never for a second never thought they would find anything.

Obviously I wasn't about to rise to that one. "I'd only get mixed up and end up telling you about Mary Barber or someone. I can't think straight today. I keep . . ." I shoved lasagna bits aimlessly around my plate. "Never mind.

I said, "Please tell me that little story wasn't your excuse for killing two people." There was a very long silence. Then Shay said, "How long were you listening at that door?

what you get out of life is mostly what you planted. Not always, no, but mostly. If you think you're a success, you will be a success; if you think you deserve nothing but crap, you'll get nothing but crap. Your inner reality shapes your outer one, every day of your life.

I looked out over the water, into the night that was coming in on the tide, and I felt nothing at all. The beach looked like something I had seen in an old film, once upon a time; that hotheaded boy felt like a character from some book I had read and given away in childhood. Only, somewhere far inside my spine and deep in the palms of my hands, something hummed; like a sound too low to hear, like a warning, like a cello string when a tuning fork strikes the perfect tone to call it awake.

At least when I palmed Aislinn off on Gary, I had the basic honesty not to do it for her own good. I did it because I felt like it, and fuck her.

many of their most passionate moral stances, as far as Cal can see, have to do with what words you should and shouldn't use for people, based on what problems they have, what race they are, or who they like to sleep with. While Cal agrees that you should call people whatever they prefer to be called, he considers this to be a question of basic manners, not of morals.

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

all proportion to the small piles of coins accumulating on the table. Apparently the game flows best with four or five, and when no one else is available, they try to rope Cal in; Cal, knowing when he's outclassed, stays clear. The young guys are going

Big Rock Candy Mountain,

The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green.

Rambo was, naturally, some kind of terrier-based mutt that weighed about five pounds soaking wet. The name had given him a Napoleon complex, complete with territorial issues.

The sun has started to slide down the sky.

He had taken up woodworking, there was sawdust on his soft worn trousers; his wife had wrapped a scarf around his neck and kissed his cheek as he went out.

And even if I somehow didn't: I had killed someone, and I always would have. It was always going to be like this. There was no undoing this, no talking my way out, no fixing it or apologizing it away, no smoothing off the sharp edges or planing it down so it could be tucked away into some smaller, manageable box. Instead it would grind me away till I fit around its own immutable shape.

There's no bad mood that fresh air and exercise can't mend.

The greens and golds have thinned to watercolor; the sky is one scoured sweep of pale blue

Oh, Frank. That's lovely of you. But she's not in New York or San Francisco, anywhere that . . ." Mum looks at the wineglass in her hand, bewildered, and puts it down on the counter. "She's in Minnesota, a smallish town there. That's where her husband's from. I don't know if . .

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.

I want you at home so that any time I start getting panicky, I can stick my head in and look at you and take a few deep breaths. It's for my sake, not yours.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Cal's eyes are still getting used to looking this far, after all those years of city blocks. Landscape is one of the few things he knows of where the reality doesn't let you down. The West of Ireland looked beautiful on the internet; from right smack in the middle of it, it looks even better.

Faye had always been sweet, flaky but sweet, unlikely to ask about your problems but deeply concerned about them if you reminded her they existed.