Michael Connelly > Quotes

“Everybody counts, or nobody counts.”
― Michael Connelly

“There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.”
― Michael Connelly, The Brass Verdict

“There is no client as scary as an innocent man."

J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."

("The Castle")”
― Michael Connelly

“You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

“What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.”
― Michael Connelly, Trunk Music

“What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures?”
― Michael Connelly, The Last Coyote

“Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically -- any way you want to look at it -- everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.”
― Michael Connelly, The Brass Verdict

“There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.”
― Michael Connelly, The Scarecrow

“I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

“I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.”
― Michael Connelly, The Brass Verdict

“In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is equalized with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run and matters are often unjust there. The compensating for us of the universe makes all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.”
― Michael Connelly, The Poet

“If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?”
― Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde

“You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.”
― Michael Connelly, Lost Light

“There is no end of things in the heart. ...she understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart.”
― Michael Connelly, Lost Light

“You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.”
― Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness

“He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

“You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."

Levin nodded thoughtfully.

"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Well, did he do it?"

She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Don't go growing a conscience on me," I said. "I've been down that road. It doesn't lead you to anything good.”
― Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness

“It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.”
― Michael Connelly, The Poet

“She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top....”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.”
― Michael Connelly

“I'm relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.”
― Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde

“Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.”
― Michael Connelly, Chasing the Dime

“The world was full of people who could not get over things. There was no closure and there was no peace. The truth did not set you free. But you could get through things. That’s what Bosch would tell him. You could head toward the light and climb and dig and fight your way out of the hole.”
― Michael Connelly, The Closers

“There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“from the short story, Cielo Azul

“Harry, get an ambulance.”

I stood up and stepped back from the scene. I felt my chest growing tight, a clarity of thought coming over me. In all my years I had spoken for the dead many times. I had avenged the dead. I was at home with the dead. But I had never so clearly had a part in pulling someone away from the outstretched hands of death.

And in that moment I knew we had done just that. And I knew that whatever happened afterward and wherever my life took me, I would always have this moment, that it would be a light that could lead me out of the darkest of tunnels.”
― Michael Connelly, Suicide Run

“You're a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wifes and an eight-year-old daughter and we all love you.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer