If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right once. Tana French More Quotes by Tana French More Quotes From Tana French Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition. Tana French oxygen real self I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges. Tana French ozone orange cutting I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos - so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms. Tana French book years thinking Real isn't what they try to tell you. Time isn't. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells, schedules, coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you'll start believing it's something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there's nothing left; to stake you down so you don't lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face. Tana French coffee real believe Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people. Tana French murderer littles people That kind of friendship doesn't just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness. Tana French morning beautiful moving I'd always been fascinated by archaeology; it was my original career plan as a kid. Tana French plan career kid always 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. Tana French understand dangerous mystery care 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. Tana French insults creative writing funny 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. Tana French me you friends life My night stand is permanently jammed with books I want to read. Tana French books stand want night 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. Tana French well big who beautiful I'm slightly in awe of writers, such as Sophie Hannah, who follow outlines. Tana French writers follow who awe With 'Broken Harbour,' a third of the way through, I worked it out and had to go back and bloody rewrite. Tana French back go broken way 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. Tana French me care remember long I'm always looking for the potential mystery in everything; I can't imagine writing about anything else. Tana French looking always mystery writing It's OK to screw up. For me, this was the big revelation when I was writing my first book, 'In the Woods': I could get it wrong as many times as I needed to. Tana French me woods writing book Your character is always right. No real person thinks they're being stupid or misguided or bigoted or evil or just plain wrong - so your characters can't, either. Tana French person stupid evil character Don't be scared of 'said.' Writers sometimes go looking for alternatives because they worry that 'he said' and 'she said' will feel repetitive if they're used all the time, but I swear, they won't. Tana French looking feel time sometimes
