Quotes from Dennis Lehane

I am still afraid. But I am not terrified.

Not all the suburbs are white." "Name one that isn't. Just one." She tries. "Um . . ." He waits. "I can feel your look," she says. "It's very smug." "Our suburbs," he says, "are designed to escape the melting pot. But now they're telling all the people they left behind precisely how they should go about rubbing elbows.

Power, most power anyway, was the fly that called itself a hawk. It could only govern those who agreed to call it a hawk instead of a fly, a tiger instead of a cat, a king instead of a man.

She was chatty and emotional and loved to string words together in dizzying tiers that climbed and climbed toward some tower of language that lost Sean somewhere on the third floor.

If it's ever within your power to do so, she considered saying aloud to Brian (but didn't), you have to bear witness to your dead. You simply have to. You have to step into the energy field of whatever remains of their spirit, their soul, their essence and let it pass through your body. And in the passing, maybe a wisp of it adheres to you, grafts itself to your cells. And in this communion, the dead continue to live. Or strive to.

We all know who you are, Mr. Coughlin. Famous Yankee gangster. Friend of the colonel. It would be safer for a man to swim into the middle of the ocean and cut his own throat than to threaten you.' He solemnly made the sign of the cross. 'But when people starve and have nowhere to go, where would you have them end up?' 'Not on my land,' Joe said. 'But it is not your land. It's God's. You are renting it. This rum? This life?' He patted his chest. 'We are all just renting from God.

Habías visto algo tan cruel? Soltó una risita. —He visto cosas

Puedes tener algo a la vista durante toda tu vida, esperando que reconozcas su presencia, pero a menudo estás demasiado cerca para verlo.

I just notice people sometimes mistake their life choices for their moral ones.

irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable

It was hideous. Because if someone can be that happy? That perfect? What's that say about the rest of us?

En mis primeros recuerdos aparece el fuego.

Had eyes Luther'd seen before in the white poor—spent his whole life eating rage in place of food. Developed a taste for it he wouldn't lose no matter how regular he ate for the rest of his life.

That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. Suddenly everything looks suspect and any brightness you may have noticed the day before has dissipated into the shadows. And the shadows are everywhere. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.

Do you know what it's like to fight with someone every day? Someone who claims to dislike conflict but who in fact lives for it?

Kenzie… Me di la vuelta para mirar a Bolton. —Si usted y su socia no son ni civiles ni polis, ¿qué son? Me encogí de hombros. —Un par de idiotas que se creen más duros de lo que realmente son.

They only kill other human beings easily. So, so, so, it can't change if they don't see us as fellow humans. Can't change if they only see us as others.

It's been a complicated decade for me.

Nobody learned nothing. Nobody evolved.

You see the worst in the best of people," she said, shaking her head, "and the best in the worst of people.

Maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It's hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding around the corner when you're not even looking.

Qué me dice de…? —miró a Phil, luego a mí y después apartó la vista. —¿Sí? —se interesó Barnett. —Bueno… creo que la bala estuvo dando vueltas por mis partes bajas y… —Sus órganos reproductores no se han visto afectados, señorita Gennaro. —Oh —exclamó ella mientras me pillaba sonriendo y me lanzaba una mirada asesina—. No digas ni una puta palabra, Patrick.

God was not some white-robed cloud king prone to sentimental meddling in human affairs. He was the iron that formed its core, and the fire in the belly of the blast furnaces that ran for a hundred years. God was the law of iron and the law of fire. God was nature and nature was God. There could not be one without the other.

They didn't think black people were necessarily good, don't get me wrong, they just thought everyone—regardless of what color they were—was probably an asshole. And to say you were less of an asshole because your skin was lighter was reprehensible to them. It just made you a bigger asshole.