Tana French Quotes

I don't want them to believe me, I just want them to think.

Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

The appearance is the allusion of abstraction when in fact I am in control of every aspect of that symmetry.

We can all be conned but at what point do we realize that we're being conned and to what point do we allow ourselves to be conned?

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.

People never know how strong is their lust for being cheated.

We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

Just because you're into control doesn't mean you're in control.

More are taken in by hope than by cunning.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

No, none of us seem so very real. We're only supporting characters in the lives of each other. Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.

The best swordsman in the world may be disarmed by a trick that's new to him.

Strange to dream in the right shape and build in the wrong shape, but maybe that is what we do every day, never believing that a dream could tell the truth.

The cleverest trick of the Devil is that nobody believes in him. It. Her. Well, we have been very stupid.

A cunning mind emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning.

For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. . .

The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.