Dennis Lehane

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

— Dennis Lehane

The world according to Bubba is simple - if it aggravates you, stop it. By whatever means necessary.

— Dennis Lehane

“Hell, everyone's nice until some kind of hard choice is put in front of them. Coronado: Stories”

— Dennis Lehane

Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men

— Dennis Lehane

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now.

— Dennis Lehane

“No, a guy had one on the T when I was coming over here. I work in Cambridge.”

— Dennis Lehane

“We all believe lies that bring us more comfort than the truth.”

— Dennis Lehane

“If Donald Trump puked, Copley Place is probably what would hit the toilet.”

— Dennis Lehane

“The trick, Teddy had long since learned, was to stay busy and stay focused. They couldn't catch you if you didn't stop…

— Dennis Lehane

“He'd told his son recently that life was luck. But life, he'd come to realize as he aged, was also memory. The…

— Dennis Lehane

“And she was-definitely-a woman who did not shrink from gauntlets, but stepped up to them, and said, Okay, bring it. Bring your…

— Dennis Lehane

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous…

— Dennis Lehane

“Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he…

— Dennis Lehane

“Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a…

— Dennis Lehane

“And that’s when it hit me. Like a building had fallen on me. The oxygen in my chest swirled into a vortex…

— Dennis Lehane

“Rumors or no, Thomas, if the men strike, we'll see fecal gravity at work like never before. Ain't a man in this…

— Dennis Lehane

I can't remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding's The Lord of the Flies. With The Death…

— Dennis Lehane

“You do not want to be a noble person?" She held her thumb and index finger close together. "A little bit?" He…

— Dennis Lehane

“Luther had passed many a white church in his day, heard them singing their hymns and chanting their "Amens" and seen them…

— Dennis Lehane

A pretty face had been damaged by acne scars and she wore and extra forty pounds on her frame like a threat.…

— Dennis Lehane

It had occurred to Sean once - on a bender about ten years before with some buddies, Sean and a bloodstream full…

— Dennis Lehane

“Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in…

— Dennis Lehane

“he'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since…

— Dennis Lehane

“When it came down to it, though, you had to remember all those assholes cutting you off in traffic and walking the…

— Dennis Lehane

“I'd like to say I found a sublime beauty in it all, but I didn't. And yet. And yet, this life we'd…

— Dennis Lehane

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making…

— Dennis Lehane

Chuck said, “Hey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Cawley looked over at him. “I’ll bite. How…

— Dennis Lehane

“People were lost and people were scared and their lynch ropes couldn't reach bankers or stockbrokers, so they looked for targets closer…

— Dennis Lehane

“We’re not our brother’s keeper, Joseph. In fact, it’s an insult to our brother to presume he can’t take care of himself.”

— Dennis Lehane

“Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steve’s hand—they’d have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of…

— Dennis Lehane

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what…

— Dennis Lehane

I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent…

— Dennis Lehane

When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in…

— Dennis Lehane

It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't…

— Dennis Lehane

“I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.”

— Dennis Lehane

“We met when we were both majoring in Space Invaders with a Pub Etiquette minor at the Happy Harbor Campus of UMass/Boston.”

— Dennis Lehane

“When they'd first come out in the morning, a single flounder lay flapping and puffing in the breezeway, one sad, swollen eye…

— Dennis Lehane

I held her, he wanted to say, and if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again…

— Dennis Lehane

“Those who did remember probably shrugged off the chill of her memory, turned their heads down to the sports page or up…

— Dennis Lehane

“All the stuff our fathers took for granted as long as you worked hard, the great safety net and the fair wage…

— Dennis Lehane