Alex > Alex's Quotes

“When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children;'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves.”
― Dennis Lehane, Gone, Baby, Gone

“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, A Drink Before the War

“The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it just the same.”
― George Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

“Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain.”
― George P. Pelecanos, The Night Gardener

“You already been a punk. Least you can do is go out like a man." Then a dull popping sound and a quiet splash.”
― George P. Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

“A pistol ain't good for nothin' but killing other human beings, man.”
― George Pelecanos, Right as Rain

“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.
Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.
They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.
It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time.
Here's to them.”
― James Ellroy, American Tabloid

“I learn things late–and only the hard way.”
― James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women: A Memoir

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”
― James Ellroy, My Dark Places

“Tell me anything.
Tell me everything.
Revoke our time apart.
Love me fierce in danger.”
― James Ellroy, White Jazz

“Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? ”
― James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover

“Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that.”
― James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia

“There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”
― Megan Abbott, Dare Me

“You have to decide who you are, little girl, she told me once. Once you know that, everyone else will too.”
― Megan Abbott, Queenpin

“If you didn't feel it on your body long after he'd left, was it really worth laying for him? I wanted to feel that.”
― Megan Abbott, Queenpin

“Here he is, the man who knows things and who should want to help me. But it is so hard to bring up things with any weight at all to a man like this. A man like this doesn’t have real conversations.”
― Megan Abbott, Die a Little

“It doesn't matter what people want to hear. It doesn't matter if people like you. It doesn't matter if the whole world thinks you're crazy. It doesn't matter whose heart you break. What matters is the truth.”
― Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

“Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you. Where we’re unhurt is where we are false. Where we are wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself. That’s where you get to show who you really are”
― Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

“Did I really think it was wonderful? Wonderful was probably an exaggeration. I thought it was fine. Maybe even good. I couldn't say the last time I thought anything was exactly wonderful. That implied more joy than I may ever have felt.”
― Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

“Denial and the desire to self-destruct are elemental cousins; mining one yields the other in equal proportion.”
― Domenica Ruta, With or Without You

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”
― Raymond Chandler, Long Goodbye

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school. People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Ladi Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service corner.”
― Richard Price, Lush Life

“Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney’s lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn’t tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that he, Strike, did not have.
Rodney would survive all this not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs.”
― Richard Price, Clockers

“I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“I think one of our cardinal fuckups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves--there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain't adequate to findin' it, and that's my fault, so torture me some more.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red

“The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can’t live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin’ wide in the turns.”
― Daniel Woodrell, The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do