Dennis Lehane quotes

Dennis Lehane is an acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter, recognized for his psychological thrillers and crime fiction. His works, such as "Mystic River" and "Shutter Island," have been adapted into major films. He continues to influence modern crime literature with his distinctive storytelling style. Here are 40 of his quotes:

There's something ugly about the flawless.

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

I'm a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum.

Dennis Lehane

Wickham is not an upwardly mobile community. It's dingy and gray as only a mill town can be. The streets are the color of a shoe bottom, and the only way to tell the difference between the bars and the homes is to look for the neon signs in the windows. The roads and sidewalks are uneven, the tar cracked and pale. Many of the people, especially the workers as they trudge home from the mills in the dying light, have the look of those who've long ago gotten used to the fact that no one remembers them. It's a place where the people are grateful for the seasons, because at least they confirm that time is actually moving on.

Dennis Lehane

And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.

Dennis Lehane

Which would be worse - to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?

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

You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.

Dennis Lehane

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

Happiness comes in moments, & then it's gone until the next time. Could be years. But sadness settles it.

Dennis Lehane

I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus they suck the life right out of a party.

Dennis Lehane

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

Dennis Lehane

There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.

Dennis Lehane

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

Dennis Lehane

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

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

The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.

Dennis Lehane

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

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

What molds us is what maims us.

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

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