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
Need
Rewrite
Right
Paragraph
Needs
Forty
Fifty
Nine
Terrible
Fine
Times

More quotes by 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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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.
Tana French
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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
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.
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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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Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.
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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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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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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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.
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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One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.
Tana French
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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.
Tana French
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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.
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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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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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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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