Quotes from Tana French

Secretly, I still get proud of the ways Rosie and I loved each other. We had no one else to learn from - none of our parents were shining examples of relationship success - so we learned this from each other: 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.

I've only got a handful of memories, and I don't want them wearing away, textures rubbing smooth, colors fading from overexposure. When I take them out, once in a blue moon, I need them bright enough to catch my breath and sharp enough to cut.

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind.

You can't make a person, a human being with a first kiss and a sense of humor and a favorite sandwich, and then expect her to dissolve back into scribbled notes and whiskeyed coffee when she no longer suits your purposes. I think I always knew she would come back to find me, someday.

Reminded myself: the ones you don't like are a bonus. They can't fool you as easy as the ones you do.

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.

In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood.

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.

It stunned me. I had never said it before. I knew that I would never say it again, not really; that you only get one shot at in a lifetime. I got mine out of nowhere on a misty autumn evening, under a street lamp shining yellow streaks on the wet pavement, with Rosie's strong pliable fingers woven through mine.

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.

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.

Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.

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.

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.

I wanted it the way an alcoholic must want booze: badly enough to shove aside the hard knowledge that this was a truly lousy idea.

I didn't even try to explain to him what I was seeing, the fine spreading web through which we had all tugged one another to this place, the multiple innocences that make guilt.

About your easy heads my prayers I said with syllables of clay. What gift, I asked, shall I bring now Before I weep and walk away? Take, they replied, the oak and laurel. Take our fortune of tears and live Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask Is the one gift you cannot give.

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.

I spend my days watching soap operas, eating bonbons and plotting society's downfall.

When you look at someone you knew when you were young, you always see the person you first met,

I suppose I've always had a yearning, in spite of the fact that I am temperamentally unsuited to the role in every possible way, to be a hero out of myth, golden and reckless, galloping bareback to meet my fate on a wild horse no other man could ride.

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.

They are forever, a brief and mortal forever, a forever that will grow into their bones and be held inside them after it ends, intact, indestructible.

I'm not the type to look back over my shoulder, or at least I try hard not to be. Gone is gone; pretending anything else is a waste of time.