Quotes from Michael Connelly

He believed that war brought out the true character in a person, good or bad. He had no sympathy for Banks or the others.

The citizens want their police to protect them, to keep the plague from their eyes, from their doors. But those same John Q.'s are the first to stare wide-eyed and point the finger of outrage when they see close up exactly what the job they've given the cops entails.

The only way to prove I didn't do it is to prove who did," I said. "That's the law of innocence.

Somebody once called the media the merchants of chaos.

It's all a cesspool, man. Doesn't matter if you're on the bottom or the top. You're still swimming in shit.

Okay, Harry. We can work cases. But we bend the rules. We don't break them.

The paying jobs were few and she was often taken advantage of by the leeches who were part of the entertainment industry. But she persevered.

It was a stock answer and I noted that going beyond government requirements when there were no such requirements meant nothing.

Courts across the country had long approved the use of deception and trickery by police in an interview setting with a suspect, holding that an innocent person would see through the deception and not falsely confess to the crime.

Sir, I can't talk to you without a mask," Moore said loudly. "Go get a mask.

The intrusion of the government into our lives is pervasive. Where do we make a stand? I'm making mine right here.

There was something deeply affecting about that. Something unfair that went beyond the general unfairness of death at the hands of another. She wondered how men would live if they knew that in every moment of their lives, their size and nature made them vulnerable to the opposite sex.

pride gets in the way of a lot of the right decisions

McCaleb classified these cops as avenging angels. It had been his experience that these cop/angels were the best investigators he ever worked with. He also came to believe that they traveled closest to that unseen edge beneath which lies the abyss.

just because they say it doesn't make it true. After all, they're lawyers.

An accident I could live with. All that time I was waiting, knowing that somebody had to die for me to live, I was getting myself ready to accept it as an accident. With an accident it's like it was fated or something. But a murder… that comes with evil intent attached. It's not happenstance. It means that I'm the benefactor of an act of evil, Doctor, and that's why it's different now.

She's interested in Japanese history right now, so that's what I'm reading to her. And there's this saying they have about conformist society: The nail that sticks out gets pounded down.

Take every case personally and you get angry. It builds a fire. It gives you the edge you need to go the distance every time out.

When it came to opening statements, I was from the Legal Siegel school of law. He always said, save your powder, meaning less is more; don't reveal your case or its surprises until it's time to present your evidence.

King retired about five years ago and moved to East Bumfuck, Idaho—somewhere out in the woods with no phone and no internet. He went completely off the grid. She

It is in the instinctual interpretation of voice and personality that we form our judgments of others. Nothing beats that. Not fingerprints, not DNA, not the pointed finger of an eyewitness.

I've seen long careers and careers cut short. The difference is in how you handle the darkness.

Did you ever hear what J. Edgar Hoover said about justice?" she asked. "He probably said a lot, but I don't recall any of it offhand." "He said that justice is incidental to law and order. I think he was right.

parents see their children not only as they are but as they hope they will be in the future. Happy, fulfilled, not afraid.