Ken Bruen > Quotes

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”
― Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

“The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned........THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.”
― Ken Bruen

“I get through some print.”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“The whiskey kicked like a mugger.”
― Ken Bruen, Blitz

“It’s said the difference between one friend and none is infinity.”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“Your life is in some bizarre state when priests are throwing abuse at you on the street.”
― Ken Bruen, The Magdalen Martyrs

“-it's life... In all its granite hardness.”
― Ken Bruen, Taming The Alien

“I've always been a reader; no matter what else I've lost, I hung on to that.”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“Books. I needed to ground myself and nothing, not even the Jay, quite does it like books. I don't always have the focus to read them but I sure do need them around”
― Ken Bruen

“Hemingway had a handy dictum. You want to know if something is morally right? Listen to your stomach. If it sits like broken glass, then it’s morally wrong.”
― Ken Bruen, The Devil

“time doesn’t pass. We pass.”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“He looked old, like a stranger. He was someone else, someone whom he could easily hate. (Tom Pitts, Piggyback)”
― Ken Bruen, Green Hell

“And so evil flourishes and spreads because decent people don't want to make a fuss.”
― Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

“I didn't know what to say. Said 'I don't know what to say.”
― Ken Bruen

“Expect nothing, and by Christ, you’re entitled to even less.”
― Ken Bruen, The Devil

“I had me one sharp knife, a throwback to my glory days of the swans, and it’s sharp as a nun on her second sherry.”
― Ken Bruen, The Devil

“The national sport in Ireland, apart from talking, is hurling.”
― Ken Bruen, The McDead

“He missed two people: a) the girl she was; b) the person she’d made him feel he might have been. A deep sigh escaped him.”
― Ken Bruen

“In London, I tended to hang with the fallen.”
― Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

“A bank is a place that will lend you money if………………………………… you can prove you don’t need it.”
― Ken Bruen, Headstone

“He drank, not because of the darkness in him but the darkness in others.”
― Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

“She obviously had disappointing news in her teens and wasn't yet recovered.”
― Ken Bruen, A White Arrest

“He was in his mid-thirties, with a posture that suggested a hundred.”
― Ken Bruen, Headstone

“Only dead fish swim with the stream.”
― Ken Bruen, Headstone

“Even Def Leppard couldn’t get him out of his funk. When the Def couldn’t crank you, it was way past time to shoot someone.”
― Ken Bruen, Bust

“Existence is sometimes what a forward artillery observer sees of enemy lines through field glasses. A distant and troubling view brought suddenly into focus with a wealth of obscene detail. It”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“Straley, Gary Phillips, Jim Nesbitt, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, Tony Black. Vinny said, ‘Nice list.”
― Ken Bruen, The Devil

“Dennis Wheatley”
― Ken Bruen, The Devil

“There’s always been books. All my bedraggled life, they’ve been the only constant. Even Sutton, my closest friend, had exclaimed, “What’s with the fucking reading, man? You used to be a guard, for christsakes.” Which is Irish logic at its finest. I’d said to him then and umpteen times since, “Reading transports me.”
― Ken Bruen, The Guards

“Rosie had what are termed ‘grateful looks’. She was grateful if anybody looked. Few did, not even Jack. Leroy Baker was a poor example of strength.”
― Ken Bruen, The White Trilogy: A White Arrest, Taming the Alien, and The McDead