James Renner > Quotes

“Stories are magic, and that is why the first thing any dictator does is to ban the stories that do not agree with him.”
― James Renner, The Great Forgetting

“There is no closure for this. Closure is for buildings, not people.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“The universe is absurd. People want to make sense of it because we’re hardwired to find reason in the randomness. We look for patterns in the chaos. See omens in coincidence. We look at the random distribution of stars in the sky and pretend they look like animals, call them constellations. For some reason, we want to give meaning to the meaningless. If you go looking for the number eighty-eight, you’ll see it everywhere—the number of keys on a piano, the number of counties in Ohio—but it doesn’t mean anything.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“When you’re lost in the middle of a set of dominoes, you can’t see the pattern that’s forming in the falling blocks around you.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“We forget how dangerous nature can be. We want to forget, I think. We don’t want to be reminded that nature is more deadly than man. Man can be cruel, but nature is indifferent. It is the unrivaled psychopath.”
― James Renner, True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

“ONE OF MY FAVORITE NOVELS is this little mystery that was published in 2012, The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. The conceit is, the world is ending (an asteroid coming in hot, no way to stop it), but one New Hampshire detective decides to keep working a homicide case. I love that idea. It’s at once so ridiculous and so human: We are all the Last Policeman, after all, going about our jobs, doing what we know how to do, as we wait for our death, which may come tomorrow or fifty years from now. We’re all living on borrowed time.”
― James Renner, Little, Crazy Children: A True Crime Tragedy of Lost Innocence

“Some families are magnets for tragedy, it's been my experience that those who have suffered the most are usual the first ones to suffer again.”
― James Renner, True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

“Get out of my store or I'm going to beat your head in." This should have been enough motivation for me to leave. But can I be honest here? I'm the kind of guy who, when you tell me you'e going to beat my head in, I'll stay around to make you do it.”
― James Renner, True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

“Don’t get too upset,” said Roberta. “You may have the psychopathy of a dangerous man, but so do many cops. In fact, a lot of CEOs would have scored the same as you, or worse. Donald Trump is probably a sociopath. But it’s what makes him successful.”
― James Renner, True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

“And the process, the ritual, quieted the hum of his mind so he could write.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“selected a disc, and turned the volume up louder than he’d ever pushed it. A gentle guitar riff; a tap-tapping of some percussion instrument—he pictured a man hitting a wooden spoon against his legs; a solid male voice, and the song broke into something more, a beat that filled his head with cool images and colors. “What is it?” “Led Zeppelin,” she said. “‘Ramble On.’” He sat against the wall, his eyes trained on the space in the corner, while she selected more songs, rocking back on her legs and staring at him intently. “Free Bird.” “Roundabout.” “Sympathy for the Devil.” “Time.” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” “Brass in Pocket.” “Bad Company.” “Limelight.” “Crazy on You.” “Voodoo Child.” “Take the Long Way Home.” “Thank you,” he said. “Where have I been hiding all this time?”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“The thing is, memory is about trust. We have to trust that what we remember is fact. And we have to trust what other people remember for things we never saw.”
― James Renner, The Great Forgetting

“There are paths in life presented to you like a choice and you are given the time to make up your mind before continuing. And sometimes you can see the fork in the road and feel a harsh hand on your back pushing you down the wrong lane and there ain’t nothing you can do about that. This was one of those other times.”
― James Renner, Muse

“the walls of the submarine in which he served in WWII had bent inward during emergency dives as the pressure outside grew and grew, reminding everyone that nature, in the end, would eat them up, would swallow them whole.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“To David, Bic blues held all the power of a magic wand that chooses its owner.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“I needed more time. I’m thinking about writing that last sentence on my tombstone.”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“Some families are magnets for tragedy, it's been my experience that those who have suffered the most are usually the first ones to suffer again.”
― James Renner, True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

“How long do you look for something that doesn’t exist before it becomes a delusion? Before it becomes an obsession?”
― James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane

“The next day I got a call around five A.M. The call was from Lynda Mayer, who is my German teacher, and she told my parents what had happened to Lisa. My parents told me that Lisa had been murdered.”
― James Renner, Little, Crazy Children: A True Crime Tragedy of Lost Innocence