356 Quotes by Tana French

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

One of my da’s tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.

This country’s passion for property is built into the blood, a current as huge and primal as desire. Centuries of being turned out on the roadside at a landlord’s whim, helpless, teach your bones that everything in life hangs on owning your home.

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.

I’ve got this theory that human beings are innately religious; we have a belief system. It doesn’t have to be a theist form, necessarily. But we need a belief system, some framework on which to hang our behavior.

I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there any more. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past.

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

Sarte was right, Hell is other people.

Etiquette is the stuff you gotta do just ‘cause that’s how everyone else does it. Like holding your fork in your left hand, or saying ‘Bless you’ if someone sneezes. Manners is treating people with respect.