With 'Broken Harbour,' a third of the way through, I worked it out and had to go back and bloody rewrite. — Tana French Copy Share Image
I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day. — Tana French Copy Share Image
If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right… — Tana French Copy Share Image
I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before… — Tana French Copy Share Image
Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong.… — Tana French Copy Share Image
The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer,… — Tana French Copy Share Image
I like writing about big turning points, where professional and personal lives coalesce, where the boundaries are coming down, and you're faced… — Tana French Copy Share Image
I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so… — Tana French Copy Share Image
Don't be scared of 'said.' Writers sometimes go looking for alternatives because they worry that 'he said' and 'she said' will feel… — Tana French Copy Share Image
It's OK to screw up. For me, this was the big revelation when I was writing my first book, 'In the Woods':… — Tana French Copy Share Image
I thought I could never write a proper book; I'd never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence.… — Tana French Copy Share Image
If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that… — Tana French Copy Share Image
“The idea was flawed, of course," he said irritably. "Innately and fatally flawed. It depended on two of the human race's greatest… — Tana French Copy Share Image
“...the solitude was intoxicating. On my first night there I lay on my back on the sticky carpet for hours, in the murky orange… — Tana French Copy Share
“I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would… — Tana French Copy Share
“That house shimmered in my mind like some fairy fort that appeared for one day in a lifetime, tantalizing and charged, with those four… — Tana French Copy Share
“It would take a while to occur to him that my rules had sweet fuck-all in common with his.” — Tana French Copy Share
I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day. — Tana French Copy Share
“…out here in the real world, my man, you would be amazed how seldom murder has to break into people’s lives. Ninety-nine times out… — Tana French Copy Share
“Before I could get my bearings he was on top of me and shoving my face down into the dirt. He was bigger and… — Tana French Copy Share
We think of mortality so little these days... I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones. Remember,… — Tana French Copy Share
I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I… — Tana French Copy Share
“For ten years Dublin’s been changing faster than our minds can handle. The economic boom has given us too many people with helicopters and… — Tana French Copy Share
When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to. — Tana French Copy Share
“Stephen shrugged. “Yeah. Well. I said I would.” “Ah. Are we having issues?” “This feels sleazy.” “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning.” — Tana French Copy Share
“She hears all the voices from when she was little, soothing, strengthening: Don’t be scared, not of monsters, not of witches, not of big… — Tana French Copy Share
“Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass.” — Tana French Copy Share
