Tana French Quotes

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

Sometimes, hindsight is 20/20. Sometimes it takes another situation to kind of make you look back at a different situation and really see how good you had it, you know?

It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There's a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.

I think sometimes in life we rush and only later look back and say, 'Wow, that was something pretty cool that I did,' and we realize we should have been more aware while it was happening.

I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.

I don't feel like a very nostalgic person. I think about the past much more clinically. When I look back and wonder, 'Why was I doing that? Was it a waste of time?' I don't beat myself up. Instead, I say, 'I'm so glad I did that, because now I really know what matters to me.'

I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.

The disadvantage of becoming wise is that you realize how foolish you've been.

The lessons of experience are always learned too late.

In life you only have to travel 6 inches. That is the distance from your mind to your heart.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - there are probably a lot of things I should have done that I didn't do.

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

I hate looking backward, but every once in a while it sneaks up on you.

To me, it's always interesting to see what people end up regretting, as a way maybe to avoid such regrets in your own life.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I don't think I gave 'Wings' its due. I was young. I wanted to light the world on fire.

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

I'm sure once my career's over, when I look back when I'm older, I can maybe appreciate it a little bit more.

I'm not a great one for looking back.

One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago.

There are some things I wish I never knew, but I am grateful for things that I have learned, too.

It's always what you did before. The year before is always so much better. Even when the critics hated what you did then, it always looks better five years later.

I'm certainly not sorry that there were some things I missed. You may think you're missing something at that time but later when you look at it, you didn't miss anything.

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'