Quotes by Dennis Lehane

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

“I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a ...”

“Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your...”

“...you have to bear witness to your dead. You simply have to. You have to step into their energy field of whatever remains of their spirit, their soul, their essence and let it pass through your bo...”

“It took only a second for another to arrive on the same path as yours and change your life to a point it couldn’t change back. One second.”

“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....”

“But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.”

“Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.”

“You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and y...”

“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.”

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

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

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

“We live in a world of disposable memory, nothing's built to last, not even shame.”

“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.”

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

“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 o...”

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

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

“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.”