A Quote by Tana French

I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect. My gift, or fatal flaw, is for nostalgia. I have sometimes been accused of demanding perfection, of rejecting heart's desires as soon as I get close enough that the mysterious impressionistic gloss disperses into plain solid dots, but the truth is less simplistic than that. I know very well that perfection is made up of frayed, off-struck mundanities. I suppose you could say my real weakness is a kind of long-sightedness: usually it is only at a distance, and much too late, that I can see the pattern.

Tana French

Quote Topics

Accused Am Been Close Could Demanding Desires Distance Dots Enough Except Fatal Flaw Get Gift Gloss Good Happy Heart Kind Know Late Less Long Made Much Mysterious Nostalgia Noticing Off Only Pattern Perfection Plain Real Rejecting Retrospect Say See Solid Sometimes Soon Struck Suppose Than Too Too Late Truth Truth Is Up Very Weakness Well

Quote Author

Tana French
Irish - Writer
Born: 1973

I don't see perfection as far as a visual image of perfection. "Perfection" to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, "I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do." Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That's perfection.

Drake

I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.

Tana French

One senses, in all autobiography, a straining toward perfection, perfection of a kind that connects the individual with a cosmic pattern which, because it is perfect in itself, verifies that individuals own potential perfection.

Roger Rosenblatt

... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.

Gretchen Rubin

Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time. What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination. That's all. But we live in a universe of Brahman, of Absolute Reality, self -contained Consciousness, where there's perfection, perfect life, perfect bliss, perfect being. That perfection knows nothing about wrong and right, good and bad, happy and sad. It knows only itself as Perfection. And you are That.

Robert Adams

A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.

Stephen Sondheim

Part of making good decisions in business is recognizing the poor decisions you've made and why they were poor. I've made lots of mistakes. I'm going to make more. It's the name of the game. You don't want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It's too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.

Warren Buffett

Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough?

Leo Tolstoy

I feel very lucky for that gift that I was given but it´s been quite tough to deal with sometimes too. When you are blessed with something like this and it brings emotions to people - to keep up to the magical standard that everybody wants it to be and the perfection - can be hard.

Sarah Brightman

I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.

Gerald Stern

There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.

Henry Mitchell

I feel like I have more experience with publishing humor than pretty much any editor I'm going to be dealing with so sometimes I'll get a little bit nuts if I write something I know is good a certain way, and some editor because of some restriction he has and wants to change it that I know is going to make it less funny that'll piss me off and then I'm inclined to go, "Well, hey I've been doing this a long time, maybe you should..." That doesn't happen that often, but I'm more likely to say that now than I would have been a long time ago. Because dammit, I'm infallible!

Dave Barry

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.

Charles Bukowski

God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence.

Robert Bellarmine

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.

David Ebershoff

A Quote by Tana French

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors