Quote

I had always felt that I was an observer, never a participant that I was watching from behind a thick glass wall as people went about the business of living--and did it with such ease, with a skill that they took for granted and that I had never known.

Tana French

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Tana French
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 10
Actor
Novelist
Stage Actor
Writer
Burlington
Vermont
Went
Glasses
Participant
Known
Granted
Observer
Living
Watching
Participants
Business
Skills
Observers
Felt
Took
Thick
Always
Behinds
Skill
Never
Wall
Glass
People
Behind
Ease

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I like writing about big turning points, where professional and personal lives coalesce, where the boundaries are coming down, and you're faced with a set of choices which will change life forever.
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For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be alright.
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Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.
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I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there.
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I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down.
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But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.
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I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.
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You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.
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Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.
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We think of mortality so little these days... I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones. Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I: As I am so will you be.
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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.
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My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind...
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Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.
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When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.
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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.
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Take what you want and pay for it, says God. You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and you will have to pay it.
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I wasn't sure I could make it through another hour of his company without throwing my stapler at his head.
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Being easily freaked out comes with its own special skill set: you develop subtle tricks to work around it, make sure people don't notice. Pretty soon, if you're a fast learner, you can get through the day looking almost exactly like a normal human being.
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Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.
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Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?
Tana French