Dennis Lehane

Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need.- Why is that?- What__ that, Marshal?- The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?- I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out.- How come?- Well, you think about it__he moon affects the tide, right?- Sure.- Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water.- I__l buy that.- Human brain,- Trey said, - is over fifty percent water.- No kidding?- No kidding. You figure ol_ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.

I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isn__ the least understandable thing you can do.

Chuck said, __ey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?_ Cawley looked over at him. ____l bite. How many?_ __ish,_ Chuck said and let loose a bright bark of a laugh.

How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?_ __ don__ know. How many?_ __ight._ __hy?_ __h, stop overanalyzing it.

It__ impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street.

There's always a 'she'. Isn't there?

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

What's your name?""Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?""Wanted.""By all the girls or just the law?

Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right."Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer.Softer. That would have been nice.

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?

Luther had passed many a white church in his day, heard them singing their hymns and chanting their "Amens" and seen them gather on a porch or two afterward with their lemonade and piety, but he knew if he ever showed up on their steps, starving or injured, the only response he__ get to a plea for human kindness would be the amen of a shotgun pointed in his face.

When a child disappears, the space she__ occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people__elatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print__reate a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task. __ut amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It__ a silence that__ two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed. __t__ a silence that__ different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it__ a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.__he silence of the dead says, Goodbye. __he silence of the missing says, Find me.

All the stuff our fathers took for granted as long as you worked hard, the great safety net and the fair wage and the gold watch at the end of it all? That's all gone around here, my friend.

Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.

Maybe honor was in its twilight. Maybe it had always been heading that way. Or worse, maybe it had always been an illusion.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.

Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in the face or live with the comfort of ignorance and lies. And ignorance and lies were often underrated. Most people Brendan knew couldn't make it through the day without a saucerful of ignorance and a side of lies.