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Dennis Lehane Quotes | Quotes said by Dennis Lehane

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #1

    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.


  • Dennis Lehane Quote #2

    And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #3

    Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #4

    As they've always been. And they don't change just because you want them to.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #5

    Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in the face or live with the comfort of ignorance and lies. And ignorance and lies were often underrated. Most people Brendan knew couldn't make it through the day without a saucerful of ignorance and a side of lies.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #6

    Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #7

    Chuck said, “Hey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Cawley looked over at him. “I’ll bite. How many?” “Fish,” Chuck said and let loose a bright bark of a laugh.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #8

    Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steve’s hand—they’d have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #9

    Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #10

    Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need.
    - Why is that?
    - What’s that, Marshal?
    - The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?
    - I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out.
    - How come?
    - Well, you think about it—the moon affects the tide, right?
    - Sure.
    - Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water.
    - I’ll buy that.
    - Human brain,- Trey said, - is over fifty percent water.
    - No kidding?
    - No kidding. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #11

    Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he did, he had to admit, he missed his laugh.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #12

    Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #13

    Happiness made Marv anxious because he knew it didn't last. But happiness destroyed was worth wrapping your arms around because it always hugged you back.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #14

    he'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they this weilded power barbarically so the world would not find them out

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #15

    He’d never wanted kids. Outside of priority boarding on an airline, he couldn’t see the upside to them. They took over your life and filled you with terror and weariness and people acted like having one was a blessed event and talked about them in the reverent tones they once reserved for gods. When it came down to it, though, you had to remember that 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.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #16

    How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “I don’t know. How many?” “Eight.” “Why?” “Oh, stop overanalyzing it.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #17

    I believe in God. Maybe not the Catholic God or even the Christian one because I have a hard time seeing any God as elitist. I also have a hard time believing that anything that created rain forests and oceans and an infinite universe would, in the same process, create something as unnatural as humanity in its own image. I believe in God, but not as a he or she or an it, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #18

    I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #19

    I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isn’t the least understandable thing you can do.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #20

    It occurred to him that thinking like this could explain why, even after all the jobs he'd pulled, he rarely had much money in his pockets. Sometimes it seemed like he stole money from one place just to give it away somewhere else.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #21

    It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #22

    It's odd how fast a beautiful woman can turn a guy's mind into lint storage. Just by being a beautiful woman.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #23

    It’s impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #24

    Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right.
    Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer.
    Softer. That would have been nice.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #25

    Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #26

    Joe knew what the nod meant-this was why they became outlaws. To live moments the insurance salesman of the world, the truck drivers, and lawyers and bank tellers and carpenters and realtors would never know. Moments in a world without nets-none to catch you and none to envelop you. Joe looked at Dion and recalled what he’d felt after the first time they’d knocked over that newsstand on Bowdoin Street when they were thirteen years old, We will probably die young.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #27

    Lately, though, he'd just been tired in general. Tired of people. Tired of books and TV and the nightly news and songs on the radio he'd heard years before and hadn't liked much in the first place. He was tired of his clothes and tired of his hair and tired of other people's clothes and other people's hair. He was tired of wishing things made sense. He'd gotten to a point where he was pretty sure he'd heard everything anyone had to say on any given subject and so it seemed he spent his days listening to old recordings of things that hadn't seemed fresh the first time he'd heard them.
    Maybe he was simply tired of life, of the absolute effort it took to get up every goddamned morning and walk out with into the same fucking day with only slight variations in the weather and food.
    He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #28

    Luther had passed many a white church in his day, heard them singing their hymns and chanting their Amens and seen them gather on a porch or two afterward with their lemonade and piety, but he knew if he ever showed up on their steps, starving or injured, the only response he’d get to a plea for human kindness would be the amen of a shotgun pointed in his face.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #29

    Maybe honor was in its twilight. Maybe it had always been heading that way. Or worse, maybe it had always been an illusion.

  • Dennis Lehane Quote #30

    Men. If you give them half a chance, they'll fuck you over just to prove they can.

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