Quotes from John Connolly

Mrs. Abernathy frightened him, the way strong women will often frighten weak men.

They weren't evil, or vicious, or cruel. They were just bored people with too much time on their hands, and such people will, in the end, get up to mischief.

One dresses off a frequent-buyer card at Goodwill, the other like he got lost on the way to a séance. Know them?

Some words can only be spoken to those for whom we feel passionately and deeply, just as some silences can only be shared by lovers.

Slow animals always become prey in the end.

It bore an expression he'd seen before: love poisoned by disappointment.

But he was wounded, and tired, and winter was still upon him.

Funny, that. For so long Wormwood had desired the throne and then, when he'd had it, it hadn't been worth desiring after all.

If cats could count, they'd start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.

Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in human flesh. —Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas (1864)

his childhood Catholicism had never left him and he still derived comfort from a place of worship.

Warraner looked pleasantly surprised at the question, like a Mormon who had suddenly found himself invited into a house for coffee, cake, and a discussion of the wit and wisdom of Joseph Smith.

God would even have forgiven Judas Iscariot, had he asked for His forgiveness. Judas wasn't damned for betraying Christ. He was damned for despairing, for rejecting the possibility that he might be forgiven for what he had done.

although his physician had advised him not to be overly concerned about forgetting facts and names, and he should begin to worry only if he stopped noticing that he couldn't remember them—if, in essence, he forgot that he was forgetting.

daddy and it contained within it the prospect of living and the hope of dying, of endings and beginnings, of love and loss and peace and rage, all wrapped up in two whispered syllables.

Every individual spends a lifetime trying to disprove Copernicus by placing him- or herself at the heart of existence, but a small core of diehards manages to turn it into an art. Harpur Griffin was just such a man, spurred on by a suspicion, although he could never have expressed it in so many words, that he was just an emptiness with a name.

After all, evil was a kind of poison, an infection of the soul.

Perhaps, he considered, her hypocrisy had become so ingrained that she was no longer even capable of perceiving it as such.

This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for a greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope.

Most of the bad situations I've encountered began with the best of intentions.

No necesito referencias —dijo—. Sé quién es usted. Lo busqué en Google. ¿Tiene pensado matar a alguien? —¿Qué día es hoy? —Me parece que jueves. —No, no tengo pensado matar a nadie.

It is one thing to be brave in front of others, perhaps for fear of being branded a coward and becoming diminished in their eyes, but another entirely to be brave when there is nobody to witness your courage. The latter is an elemental bravery, a strength of spirit and character. It is a revelation of the essence of the self

All cynics were once romantics. Most of them still are.

Look at you," he said. "A fractured man, a broken thing. I asked for money to kill you, but none would give it. Now I understand why. There is no value to you. You're nothing, and therefore nothing is what your life is worth. But I will kill you anyway, out of pity.