Quote

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

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Tana French
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 10
Actor
Novelist
Stage Actor
Writer
Burlington
Vermont
Fifty
Nine
Terrible
Fine
Times
Need
Rewrite
Right
Paragraph
Needs
Forty

More quotes by Tana French

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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.
Tana French
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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.
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.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to you only need to get it right once.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other's heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway.
Tana French
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Sometimes, when you're close to someone, you miss things. Other people can see them, but you can't.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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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
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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.
Tana French
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When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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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...
Tana French
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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.
Tana French