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.
Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
When I was a child, I was raised Catholic. Somewhere, I didn't fit with the saints and holy men. I discovered the monsters - in Boris Karloff, I saw a beautiful, innocent creature in a state of grace, sacrificed by sins he did not commit.
Where the soul is full of peace and joy, outward surrounding and circumstances are of comparatively little account.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
When a gift is difficult to give away, it becomes even more rare and precious, somehow gathering a part of the giver to the gift itself.
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