Dennis Lehane > Quotes

“There's something ugly about the flawless.”
― Dennis Lehane, Sacred

“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

“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.”
― Dennis Lehane

“This world can only give me reminders of what I don't have, can never have, didn't have for long enough.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.”
― Dennis Lehane, Mystic River

“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, Mystic River

“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, Shutter Island

“Life isn't happily ever after... 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 that 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 you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything - because that's what growing older is.”
― Dennis Lehane, Mystic River

“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.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“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, The Given Day

“You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.”
― 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, Shutter Island

“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, Mystic River

“I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.”
― 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, Shutter Island

“Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Everyone sees different things.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.”
― Dennis Lehane, Mystic River

“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 knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.”
― Dennis Lehane

“I loved this woman the way you love ... well, nothing," he said, a note of suprise in his voice. "You can’t compare that kind of love to anything, can you? It’s its own unique gift.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“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, Shutter Island

“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.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“The world didn't give a shit. It didn't bestow. It took”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could...”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War