Quotes from Dennis Lehane

Driving down 93, I realized once and for all, that I love the things that chafe. The things that fill me with stress so total I can't remember when a block of it didn't rest on top of my heart. I love what, if broken, can't be repaired. What, if lost can't be replaced. I love my burdens.

Race don't come into it. They keep us fighting among ourselves like dogs for table scraps so we won't catch them making off with the feast.

SUN WAS in the room when he woke. He sat up and looked toward the bars, but the bars weren't there. Just a window, lower than it should have been until he realized he was up

He'd known of her, of course; everyone in the neighborhood knew of Katie. She was that beautiful. But few people really knew her. Beauty could do that; it scared you off, made you keep your distance. It wasn't like in the movies where the camera made beauty seem like something that invited you in. In the real world, beauty was like a fence to keep you out, back you off.

You think the whole electrical system is fried?" Chuck said, "Good possibility." "That would mean fences." Chuck picked up an apple as it floated onto his foot. He went into a windup and kicked his leg and fired it into the wall. "Stee-rike one!" He turned to Teddy. "That would mean fences, yes.

So he's a bad guy." "Everyone's bad." "No," Bob said, "they're not. Most people are okay." "Yeah?" A smile of disbelief. "Yeah. They just, I dunno, make a lotta messes and then they make more messes trying to clean those first messes up and after a while that's your life." She sniffled and chuckled at the same time. "That's it, uh?" "That's it sometimes.

The harsh light above them caught her face, and Sean could see what she'd look like when she was much older - a handsome woman, scarred by wisdom she never asked for.

You were having nightmares, Marshal. Serious nightmares." "I'm in a mental institution on an island in a hurricane," Teddy said. "Touché," Cawley said.

My father's gone, Joe said eventually. Emma's dead. Your brother's dead. My brothers scattered. Shit, D, you're one of the only people I know anymore. I lose you, who the fuck am I?

I stared down the slim barrel of a gun, looked into eyes rabid with fear and hatred, and saw my reflection. Pulled the trigger to make it go away. I heard the echoes of my gunshots, smelled the cordite, and in the smoke, I still saw my reflection and knew I always would.

She was his wife, mother, best friend, sister, lover, and priest.

Rumors or no, Thomas, if the men strike, we'll see fecal gravity at work like never before. Ain't a man in this room who won't be covered in shit.

When it came down to it, though, you had to remember all those assholes cutting you off in traffic and walking the streets and shouting in bars and turning their music up too loud and mugging you and raping you and selling you lemon cars-all those assholes were just children who'd aged. No miracle. Nothing sacred in that.

We all have our crosses to bear.

This terrible smallness of men was bigger than him, bigger than anything.

As far as I could see, she didn't take any better care of her apparel than I did mine, but I owned shirts that looked like they'd been run through a car engine half an hour after I removed the price tags, and she had socks from high school that were still as white as palace linen. Women and their clothes often astounded me this way, but I figured it was one of those mysteries I'd never solve - like what really happened to Amelia Earhart or the bell that used to occupy our office.

All the stuff our fathers took for granted as long as you worked hard, the great safety net and the fair wage and the gold watch at the end of it all? That's all gone around here, my friend.

She felt like weeping. She didn't know why at first, but then it hit her. He knew her. He knew her, this man she'd married, this man she'd committed herself to walking through this life with. He knew her. And—wonder of wonders—he was still here.

There's always a 'she'. Isn't there?

Civilization seems to be something we choose when it fits our purpose.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It's like a homepage without a scroll button?

One that society can't forgive, but I can.

Chuck said, Fuck if I know. Cawley stepped up beside them. Quite similar to our clinical conclusion.

Everyone wants a quick fix. We're tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed.