Quotes from Joseph Hansen

Don't forget, and don't let your reader forget, that the small world in which you have held him for the last hour or two hasn't ended. Be aware, and make him aware, that tomorrow all of its remaining inhabitants will pick up the broken fragments of their lives, and carry on.

Something had offended her and failed to apologize. Not lately-long ago. Life probably.

He was laughing. But sad was the impression he gave.

Driving is so dangerous I haven't got the guts to do it sober.

When people run out of probable things to do, they do improbable things.

I told myself all that's wrong with us is misunderstanding. That's not good, but it's not the worst. The worst is not having anyone to have a misunderstanding with.

You're a little short on self-awareness. People who are always exacting right behaviour from other people tend to be that way.

He put out a hand for Dave to shake. "You're the only new friend of Tom's I've met. And you're just what I expected." "Yup," Dave said. "I wear three-hundred-dollar suits and drive an eight-thousand-dollar car. Mr.Taylor-stop measuring people that way." "It's American," Taylor said defensively. "And Nigerian. And Bolivian," Dave said. "It started in Sumer.

Cecil reached for Dave, but Dave stepped back. "Dave, why are you doing this? You're not getting paid. Lovejoy called you off the case. You want the truth? You're compulsive. You can't leave it alone. You're like Adam Streeter, you know that? You live for danger." "I live for justice," Dave said. "Justice is a dream," Cecil scoffed, "a romantic ideal. Who the fuck gets justice in this life?(...)

Windows were broken. Where not broken they were boarded up, had been for years: the rust from nailheads had written long, sad farewells down the salt-silvered planks.

The man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.

Guns are for television actors," Dave said. "Not real people. The wrong ones always get hurt.

Have you children, Mr Brandstetter?" He shook his head. "I was one once. Does it help?

The waterwheel was twice a man's height, wider than a man's two stretched arms. The timbers, braced and bolted with rusty iron were heavy, hand-hewn, swollen with a century of wet. Moss bearded the paddles, which dripped as they rose. The sounds were good. Wooden stutter like children running down a hall at the end of school. Grudging axle thud like the heartbeat of a strong old man.

It happens to everyone and it happens fast.

Five, six, seven eight-," Cecil grinned. "-Gay is just as good as straight," Dave said.

You know what kind of a man Lonny Tooker is? The kind of a man that sets broken bird's wings." "Hitler loved dogs and babies," Dave said.

People with limp handshakes are takers.

In the stinking dark forest of splintery posts under the pier lay pizza tins, beer cans, cigarette wrappers, condoms—the joyless detritus of American joy.

Do I look like a fag?" "I don't know what a fag looks like," Dave said. "And neither does anyone else.

Dave frowned. "You`re telling me about a failure. What happened?

And I drove it straight to you. Well, maybe "straight" is not the word I want. Maybe I mean, I drove it gaily to you, all right?

From now on," he said, "I'm through catching planes." To the beat of their heels on the massive old planks, he almost started whistling in the rain.