Quotes from Michael Connelly

That's justice, she said, nodding at the statue. She doesn't hear you. She doesn't see you. She can't feel you and won't speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde.

If you get into a game of talking to the media, you keep the story alive. Information is oxygen. Without it they die.

But too much going with the flow is heading us into the sewer...

Out of the blue and into the black is what they called going into a tunnel. Each one was a black echo. Nothing but death in there. But, still, they went.

Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.

why don't you just Uber your ass out of here.

For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.

He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in. There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.

They need you until they don't need you.

If we can't be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?

He's dead: Internal bleeding. When they opened him up they found a toothbrush shiv lodged in the anal cavity. It was never determinded whether he'd put it up there for safe keeping himself or somebody else did it for him, but it was a good lesson for the rest of the inmates. They even put up a sign. Never put sharp objects up your ass.

All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed on the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn't know he had. In that moment he knew he was both saved and lost. He would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew. - Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly

Swag?" "Scientific wild ass guess.

you can't explain crazy.

There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

I put my hand down below the table to check my zipper. You have to stand before a jury only once with your fly open and it will never happen again

The art of sports writing always amazed me. Nine out of ten times the reader already knows the outcome of your story before reading it. They know who won, they probably even watched the game. But they read about it anyway and you have to find a way to write with an insight and angle that makes it seem fresh.

I once read a book about a reporter written by a reporter who described the life as always running in front of a thresher. I thought it was the most accurate description I'd read.

I have always had the suspicion that officers assigned to front desk duty were chosen by cunning supervisors because of their skills in obfuscation and disinformation.

I felt sympathy for her but not too much. Idealism dies hard with everybody.

There was more silence and Bosch pictured his partner on the other end of the line in a $900 suit and a bankrupt frown.

Bosch had always thought it wasn't a bad way to go—doing what you loved.

It was a good strategy but this is where I intended to turn her plans upside-down. In the courtroom there are three things for the lawyer to always consider: the knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Whether at the prosecution or defense table, it is the lawyer's job to master the first two and always be prepared for the third.