356 Quotes by Tana French

I'd always been fascinated by archaeology; it was my original career plan as a kid.

I've been fascinated by mysteries for as long as I can remember. Real, fictional, solved, unsolved, I don't care; they all fascinate me. I think that's a core human trait.

My night stand is permanently jammed with books I want to read.

Donna Tartt blows me away - that impeccable writing, so rich you could eat it and so luminous that it lights up the whole room, and the way she brings her characters to life so completely and in such fine detail that you know them as intimately as your dearest friends.

I'm a big admirer of Daniel Woodrell for his beautiful, precise, sparse prose - I don't do succinct well, so I'm in awe of writers who do.

In TV writing, Armando Iannucci's satire 'The Thick of It' is brilliant - equal parts hysterically funny, terrifyingly believable, and Oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-he-actually-said-that - and it's got the most satisfyingly creative insults ever.

I'm slightly in awe of writers, such as Sophie Hannah, who follow outlines.

With 'Broken Harbour,' a third of the way through, I worked it out and had to go back and bloody rewrite.

Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.