I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.
Interpretation
This quote conveys that freedom is a complex and multi-sensory experience, encompassing various natural and vivid elements.
In this quote, Tana French poetically describes freedom as a rich and immersive experience that invokes a variety of sensory perceptions. The use of contrasting elements like ozone, thunderstorms, and gunpowder alongside snow, bonfires, and cut grass illustrates the diverse and sometimes tumultuous nature of freedom, suggesting that it encompasses both beauty and chaos, as well as the refreshing and vibrant aspects of life.
In practice
A motivational speech about the importance of embracing freedom in our lives.
I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.
Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.
Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.
Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.
I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack
If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.
Jesus Christ does not teach us a spirituality “of closed eyes”, but one of “alertness”, one which entails an absolute duty to take notice of the needs of others and of situations involving those whom the Gospel tells us are our neighbours. The gaze of Jesus, what “his eyes” teach us, leads to human closeness, solidarity, giving time, sharing our gifts and even our material goods.
The flame of Christian ethics is still our highest guide.
The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.
No man has ceased to believe in God before having decided that he should not exist; no book would produce atheism, and no book can restore faith.
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