Quotes by Dennis Lehane

“Its 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,...”

“How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? I dont know. How many? Eight. Why? Oh, stop overanalyzing it.”

“I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isnt the least understandable thing you can do.”

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

“Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need.- Why is that?- Whats that, Marshal?- The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?- I know it does.-...”

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

“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 ...”

“Hed never wanted kids. Outside of priority boarding on an airline, he couldnt see the upside to them. They took over your life and filled you with terror and weariness and people acted like having ...”

“I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent ones. I went home to a very traditional, good Irish Catholic family.”

“That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.”

“Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steves handtheyd have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.”

“Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'Its like a homepage without a scroll button?”

“He was broad-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed; more than once, women had been noted openly regarding him, and not just immigrant women or those who smoked in public.”

“The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear - that something could happen to her at ...”

“When a woman once asked Joe how he could come from such a magnificent home and such a good family and still become a gangster, Joe's answer was two-pronged: (a) he wasn't a gangster, he was an outl...”

“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. Its a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.”

“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.' ...”

“She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of...”

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

“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 ...”