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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
Felt
Took
Thick
Always
Behinds
Skill
Never
Wall
Glass
People
Behind
Ease
Went
Glasses
Participant
Known
Granted
Observer
Living
Watching
Participants
Business
Skills
Observers

More quotes by Tana French

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I can't explain the alchemy that transmuted one evening into the equivalent of years held lightly in common. The only way I can put it is that we recognized, too surely even for surprise, that we shared the same currency.
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Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who've been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God. Life has more than enough excitement up its sleeve, ready to hit you with as soon as you're not looking, without you adding to the drama.
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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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Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.
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Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.
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Time works so hard for us, if only we can let 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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When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them
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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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Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.
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If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.
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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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I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.
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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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When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.
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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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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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I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had.
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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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Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?
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