Lehane Quotes & Sayings

My blessings outweigh my regrets. — Dennis Lehane

It was like sitting through a movie, no matter how boring or confusing, until the end. Because at the end, sometimes things were explained or the ending itself was cool enough that you felt like sitting through all the boring stuff had been worth it. — Dennis Lehane

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic. — Dennis Lehane

Not that Danny seemed intent on fucking it up, just that he was a man after all, and no one knew better than Luther himself how completely a man could step on his own dick when what he thought he wanted contradicted what he knew he needed. The — Dennis Lehane

You've mislaid your trust in the past, had your faith in people broken, shattered even. You've been betrayed. Lied to. So you've chosen not to trust. And this protects you to some extent, I'm sure. But it also isolates you from the rest of humanity. You are disconnected. You are displaced. And the only way to find your way back to a place, to a connection, is to trust again. — Dennis Lehane

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it? — Dennis Lehane

We age as the rest of the world watches, she thought, but somehow we're the last to know. There — Dennis Lehane

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. — Dennis Lehane

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 you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin. — Dennis Lehane

I don't believe he casts people into eternal flame for fornication, as you pointed out. Or for believing in a version of him that is a little off the mark. I believe - or, I want to believe - he considers the worst sins to be those we commit in his name. — Dennis Lehane

Plans are just dreams until they're executed. — Dennis Lehane

This was the photograph, I knew, that had already burned its way into my dreams and my shadows, into that part of my mind that I have no control over. Its image would reappear in all its wanton cruelty for the rest of my life, particularly when I was least prepared for it. — Dennis Lehane

Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an 8-ball in the glove
compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat. — Dennis Lehane

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. — Dennis Lehane

There's something ugly about the flawless. — Dennis Lehane

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

Or maybe I'd do what I always do - hang out and see what develops. Fatalist to the core. — Dennis Lehane

This was a cruel trick of the mind, yes, but Teddy had long ago accepted the logic of it - waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without a history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present. What — Dennis Lehane

How am I supposed to let you go, that's all I'm asking. I want to hold you again, smell you, and, yes too, I just want you to fade. To please, please fade ... — Dennis Lehane

I'm driving a stolen car On a pitch black night And I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright. — Dennis Lehane

The only people who ask questions like, 'Did he want to be something besides a bartender,' are people who can become whatever they want. The rest of us are just Americans. — Dennis Lehane

The world according to Bubba is simple - if it aggravates you, stop it. By whatever means necessary. — Dennis Lehane

Another long pull of the sawteeth across the pink folds of his brain, and Teddy had to bite down against a scream and he heard Rachel's screams in there too with the fire and he saw her looking into his eyes and felt her breath on his lips and felt her face in his hands as his thumbs caressed her temples and that fucking saw went back and forth through his head - don'ttakethosefuckingpills — Dennis Lehane

Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?" "No, sir." "Gods don't think they can become men. — Dennis Lehane

If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would oherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person's actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It's a no-win situation. It's a death penalty really. — Dennis Lehane

Yeah, well, it's not like the old days." I bit into my lobster roll. Maybe the best lobster roll in Boston, which made it, arguably, the best lobster roll in the world. "It's — Dennis Lehane

Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present. — Dennis Lehane

Dave watched him standing up at the bar, chatting with one of the old dockworkers as he waited for his drinks, Dave thinking the guys in here knew what it was to be men. Men without doubts, men who never questioned the rightness of their own actions, men who weren't confused by the world or what was expected of them in it.
It was fear, he guessed. That's what he'd always had that they didn't. Fear had settled into him at such an early age - permanently, the way Val's prison friend had claimed sadness did. Fear had founda place in Dave and never left, and so he feared doing wrong and he feared fucking up and he feared not being intelligent and he feared not being a good husband or a good father or much of a man. Fear had been in him so long he wasn't sure he could remember what it had felt like to live without it. — Dennis Lehane

I love my burdens. — Dennis Lehane

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. — Dennis Lehane

When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children;'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves. — Dennis Lehane

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

The two guys with the Weimaraners did note that Amanda looked a little like the girl in the Twilight movies, if not in the hair and the cheekbones, then in the nose and the forhead and the close-set-eyes, but then they got into an argument over whether said actress was a Kristen or a Kirsten, and I wandered over to the middle-aged woman before it devolved into a Team Edward vs Team Jacob imbroglio — Dennis Lehane

Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda's voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it's indelibly her own. — Dennis Lehane

She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who'd been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim. — Dennis Lehane

You can have two families in this life, Joe, the one you're born to and the one you build. — Dennis Lehane

People evaluate you in terms of how you handle things going forward. — Chris Lehane

Music" - he smiled his glorious smile and raised his index finger - "music speaks for the soul because words are too small. — Dennis Lehane

moaned his final breath into the imitation Oriental. — Dennis Lehane

We live by night and dance fast so grass can't grow under our feet. That's our creed. — Dennis Lehane

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

Things weren't ever what they were supposed to be; they were what they were, and that was the simple truth of it, a truth that didn't change just because you wanted it to. — Dennis Lehane

Everyone I know lies, breaks their word, and has perfectly legitimate excuses for why they do. Except you. Haven't you ever noticed that? Two times in twelve years, you said you'd find this girl no matter what. And you did. Why? Because you gave your word, babe. And that might not mean shit to the rest of the world, but it means everything to you. Whatever else hapened today, you found her twice, Patrick. When no one else would even try. — Dennis Lehane

He was just getting started. He was ready to bust wide open. He could feel it. Big things. Big things were coming. From him. From everywhere. That was the feeling he got lately, as if the whole world had been held in a stable, him included. But soon, soon it was going to bust out all over the place. — Dennis Lehane

New Music, I guess, is all those bands Angie listens to. They have names like Depeche Mode and The Smiths and all they sound the same to me - like a bunch of skinny white British nerds on Thorazine. The Stones, when they started, were a bunch of skinny white British nerds too, but they never sounded like they were on Thorazine. Even if they were. — Dennis Lehane

Your first family is your blood family and you always be true to that. That means something. But there's another family and that's the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they're as much blood as your first family. Maybe more so, because they don't have to look out for you and they don't have to love you. They choose to. — Dennis Lehane

On September 7th, after the Cubs dropped Game Three, the two teams boarded the Michigan Central together to embark on the twenty-seven hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats. — Dennis Lehane

You didn't die and go to a better place; this was the better place because you weren't dead. Heaven wasn't in the clouds; it was the air in your lungs. — Dennis Lehane

Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this writing job. — Dennis Lehane

I've built something valuable here. But valuable things also have a way of being misunderstood in their own time. 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 day back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress. — Dennis Lehane

I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two. — Dennis Lehane

Those who did remember probably shrugged off the chill of her memory, turned their heads down to the sports page or up toward the approaching bus. The world is a terrible place, they thought. Bad things happen every day. My bus is late. — Dennis Lehane

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now. — Dennis Lehane

Bob, who had never been late in his life, suspected there was something hostile at the core of people who always were. — Dennis Lehane

We were supposed to grow old together, Dolores. Have kids. Take walks under old trees. I wanted to watch the lines etch themselves into your flesh and know when each and every one of them appeared. Die together. — Dennis Lehane

Whatever she saw beyond the camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably - wasn't fit to be seen. — Dennis Lehane

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. — Dennis Lehane

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

The truth of himself was a lonely boy in an empty house, waiting for someone to knock on his bedroom door and ask if he was okay. — Dennis Lehane

The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect. And he was right. But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I think, worthy of our awe and our loyalty. — Dennis Lehane

Each day in this country, twenty-three hundred children are reported missing. — Dennis Lehane

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

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line. — Dennis Lehane

Everyone sees different things. — Dennis Lehane

I don't have room in my heart for most people. Got nothing against them, but I got nothing for them, either. — Dennis Lehane

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences. — Dennis Lehane

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

Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know. — Dennis Lehane

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. 'These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going ot make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would have hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything -because that's what growing older is. — Dennis Lehane

Baby, why are you all wet? — Dennis Lehane

Jimmy looked back over at his wife, and Celeste could feel the tenderest of aches in the look. She could feel another teardrop piece of Jimmy's heart detach and free-fall down the inside of his chest. — Dennis Lehane

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning. — Dennis Lehane

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

I held her, he wanted to say, and if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn't raise the gun to my head fast enough. — Dennis Lehane

He had a punch like a bag full of cue balls. — Dennis Lehane

Some ghost of myself still lived back in the days when we'd shared a bed and talked of the future. But that love we'd had and those selves we'd been were gone, placed in a box like old photographs and letters you'd never read again. — Dennis Lehane

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

It was one of those sneaky days in late winter where spring came along to get a lay of the land. — Dennis Lehane

It's been a complicated decade for me." She — Dennis Lehane

You don't have a partner, Marshal, You came here alone. — Dennis Lehane

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

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 my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic. — Dennis Lehane

The world didn't give a shit. It didn't bestow. It took — Dennis Lehane

Cawley probably wasn't used to questions that continued after he'd shown displeasure with them, so they gave him a minute to catch his breath. — Dennis Lehane

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb. — Dennis Lehane

We're humans, so we're messy — Dennis Lehane

What you put out into the world will always come back for you. — Dennis Lehane

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. — Dennis Lehane

And two men standing up top, weeping like children because they'd somehow never known the world could get this bad. — Dennis Lehane

You was in all sorts of places, huh?" "Yeah, I was. Saw the world." "What'd you think of it?" "Different languages, same shit. — Dennis Lehane

Grief, I swear to God, doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the senses. And sometimes, all I want to do is cut off my nose so I can't smell her, hack my fingers off at the joint. — Dennis Lehane

The trick, Teddy had long since learned, was to stay busy and stay focused. They couldn't catch you if you didn't stop running. — Dennis Lehane

That if you believe, really believe, and if your strategy is sound, and if you're willing to leave everything you've got on the field of battle to win the day" - he held his arms wide - "you can do anything." She'd — Dennis Lehane

Don't forget - Charlie Chaplin too, my friend." "I'd do an imitation, but I don't know what he sounds like." "Hey, not bad, boss. You can open for me in the Catskills. — Dennis Lehane

He looked up at the underside of the bridge, everyone battling to either get into the city or out of it, everyone in an irritated rush, probably half aware that they wouldn't feel any better once they got home. Half of them would go right back out again to the market for something they'd forgotten, to a bar, to the video store, to a restaurant where they'd wait in line again. And for what? What did we line up for? Where did we expect to go? And why were we never as happy as we thought we'd be once we got there? — Dennis Lehane

One that society can't forgive, but I can. — Dennis Lehane

We don't know how she got out of her room
It's as if she evaporated, straight through the walls. — Dennis Lehane

You should write because some stray scrap of your soul is trying to manifest itself verbally. — Dennis Lehane

I'd like to say I found a sublime beauty in it all, but I didn't. And yet. And yet, this life we'd built filled our car — Dennis Lehane

Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended. — Dennis Lehane