Quotes from John Connolly

People love conspiracies," said Harris. "They find them reassuring. It's the consolation that someone, somewhere might actually have a design in mind. The fearful embrace conspiracies for the same reason they believe in God.

lagophthalmos—a

There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud, so appaling that even to acknowledge them is to risk sacrificing a crucial part of one's humanity, to exist in a colder, crueler world than before. The Burning Soul

He was briefly tempted to reach for the brandy again, but no particular good had come of their previous shared moments, and so he opted for the routine of making a big pot of tea.

Newspaper stories were as insubstantial as smoke, as long-lived as mayflies. They did not take root but were instead like weeds that crawled along the ground, stealing the sunlight from more deserving tales.

I came back," said David, and the Woodsman smiled. "Most people do, in the end," he replied, and David wondered at how like his father the Woodsman was, and how he had failed to notice it before.

Life was simpler, too, if one did not think too hard. -The Burning Soul

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves.

My pal is dead.

The present is history's child

You may think me mad." "My dear fellow, we hardly know each other. I wouldn't dare to make such a judgment until we were better acquainted.

We all know that books burn – yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. … In this war, we know, books are weapons. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)

Parker had seen men and women physically diminished in this way before, weighed down by suffering. Grief has its own gravity. They

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

He would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books. And some of the children understood, and some did not.

For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven. And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again.

Being scared isn't the problem. It's not running away that's the hard part.

The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do.

Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, books had no real existence in our world. Like seeds in the beak of a bird waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. they lie dormant hoping for the chance to emerge.They want us to give them life.

Each man dreams his own heaven.

You mean they killed her?" asked David. They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That's what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'" Um and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?" Eaten quickly," said Brother Number One.

Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).