356 Quotes by Tana French

Liv was never afraid of cot death or of Holly falling out of bed and hitting her head or any of the standard-issue parental boogeymen. All she worried about was that Holly might wake up, in the middle of the night, and think she was all alone.

You forget what it was like. You’d swear on your life you never will, but year by year it falls away. How your temperature ran off the mercury, your heart galloped flat-out and never needed to rest, everything was pitched on the edge of shattering glass. How wanting something was like dying of thirst. How your skin was too fine to keep out any of the million things flooding by; every color boiled bright enough to scald you, any second of any day could send you soaring or rip you to bloody shreds.

My ribs opened up like windows, I’d forgotten you could breathe that deeply.

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

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.

If I’ve learned one thing today, it’s that teenage girls make Moriarty look like a babe in the woods.” Detective Stephen Moran.

But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver.

I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.

He wants to punch something, but he knows that would do nothing but bust his knuckles. Having that much sense makes him feel old.