DLDennis Lehane

56 collected words

Dennis Lehane

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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

02Undated

Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.

Dennis Lehane / quote

03Undated

When they'd first come out in the morning, a single flounder lay flapping and puffing in the breezeway, one sad, swollen eye looking back toward the sea.

Dennis Lehane / quote

04Undated

She told him that he had the most beautiful voice she'd ever heard, that it sounded like whiskey and wood smoke.

Dennis Lehane / quote

05Undated

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

06Undated

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

Dennis Lehane / quote

07Undated

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

Dennis Lehane / quote

08Undated

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

09Undated

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

Dennis Lehane / quote

10Undated

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

11Undated

When a child disappears, the space she’d occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people—relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print—create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task. “But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It’s a silence that’s two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed. “It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.“The silence of the dead says, Goodbye. “The silence of the missing says, Find me.

Dennis Lehane / quote

12Undated

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

13Undated

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?

Dennis Lehane / quote

14Undated

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

15Undated

What's your name?""Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?""Wanted.""By all the girls or just the law?

Dennis Lehane / quote

16Undated

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

Dennis Lehane / quote

17Undated

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

18Undated

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

19Undated

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

20Undated

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

21Undated

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

22Undated

Maybe that's what love is-counting the bandages until someone says, 'Enough'.

Dennis Lehane / quote

23Undated

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

24Undated

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