[b]Tana French
I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.[/b]
And not always consciously.
I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.
On the other hand, noticing when you’re miserable…
Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their décor, their clothes, everything – taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life.
In other words, go out and buy something.
What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this – two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Duplicitously as it were.
There’s a Spanish proverb, he said, that’s always fascinated me. ‘Take what you want and pay for it, says God.’ I don’t believe in God, Daniel said, but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.
Not counting the part where you can’t have something you want if you had all the money in the world.
My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.
So far, nothing.