The collection / 70 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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70 results · Page 3 of 3Play this collection ▷

01c. 1973 AD

Some part of me believed, unassailably, and wordlessly and perhaps with a flick of justice, that they had sent me away because they were afraid of me. Like some monstrously deformed child who should never have lived beyond infancy, or a conjoined twin whose other half died under the knife, I had- simply by surviving-become a freak of nature.

Tana French / quote

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02c. 1973 AD

Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.

Tana French / quote

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03c. 1973 AD

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 / quote

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04c. 1973 AD

You can’t take credit for what you do when your back is against the wall.

Tana French / quote

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05c. 1973 AD

Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different

Tana French / quote

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06c. 1973 AD

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop on women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds?

Tana French / quote

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07c. 1973 AD

Girlfriends aren’t allowed to care if you have Stilton socks. Friends are.” All the same, she gave her hands a quick, professional shake and took hold of my foot. “Plus, you might be less of a pain in the arse if you got more action.

Tana French / quote

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08c. 1973 AD

One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.

Tana French / quote

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09c. 1973 AD

Breslin gives me his wise-teacher smile, which is kind and crinkly and would make me feel warm all over if I was dumber than a bag of hair.

Tana French / quote

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10c. 1973 AD

How's Alison getting on?'Conway snorted. 'Tucked up in the sick room like she's dying in some season finale. Little fadey voice on her and all. She's having a great old time.

Tana French / quote

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11c. 1973 AD

He told me and Rafe to stay put in case you came home, burn the note and get hot water and disinfectant and bandages rea

Tana French / quote

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12c. 1973 AD

If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn't forgive her for being hurt.

Tana French / quote

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13c. 1973 AD

and I wanted this girl who was like no girl I had ever known, wanted her not in spite of her moods and her secret bruises and her sad attempts at artifice but because of them, because of them all.

Tana French / quote

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14c. 1973 AD

I should've known the eyes. Wide, bright blue, and something about the delicate arc of the lids: a cat's slant, a pale jeweled girl in an old painting, a secret.

Tana French / quote

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15c. 1973 AD

Always fuck with people's expectations, sunshine. It's good for their circulation.

Tana French / quote

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16c. 1973 AD

The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.

Tana French / quote

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17c. 1973 AD

In my book, the media are a necessary evil: they live off the animal inside us, they bait the front pages with second-hand blood for the hyenas to snuffle up, but they come in useful enough that you want to stay on their good side.

Tana French / quote

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18c. 1973 AD

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 is worth it and a limb you can accept losing.

Tana French / quote

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19c. 1973 AD

If you're good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.

Tana French / quote

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20c. 1973 AD

Breakfast was the full whammy: eggs, rashers, sausages, black pudding, fried bread, fried tomatoes. This was clearly some kind of statement, but I couldn't work out whether it was See, we're doing just grand without you, or I'm still slaving my fingers to the bone for you even though you don't deserve it, or possibly We'll be even when this lot gives you a heart attack.

Tana French / quote

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21c. 1973 AD

Just about everything in this life is treacherous, ready to twist and shape-shift at any second; it seemed to me that the whole world would be a different place if you had someone you were certain of, certain to the bone, or if you could be that to someone else.

Tana French / quote

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22c. 1973 AD

Don’t fool yourself: we all have a cruel streak. We keep it under lock and key either because we’re afraid of getting punished or because we believe this will somehow make a difference, make the world a better place.

Tana French / quote

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