A Drink Before the War Quotes

“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

“I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“I believe in God. Maybe not the Catholic God or even the Christian one because I have a hard time seeing any God as elitist. I also have a hard time believing that anything that created rain forests and oceans and an infinite universe would, in the same process, create something as unnatural as humanity in its own image. I believe in God, but not as a he or she or an it, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“The world according to Bubba is simple - if it aggravates you, stop it. By whatever means necessary.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“This was the photograph, I knew, that had already burned its way into my dreams and my shadows, into that part of my mind that I have no control over. Its image would reappear in all its wanton cruelty for the rest of my life, particularly when I was least prepared for it.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Twelve dead?” I said. “Jesus.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“It never works that way. Once that ugliness has been forced into you, it becomes part of your blood, dilutes it, races through your heart and back out again, staining everything as it goes. The ugliness never goes away, never comes out, no matter what you do. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. All you can do is hope to control it.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“New Music, I guess, is all those bands Angie listens to. They have names like Depeche Mode and The Smiths and all they sound the same to me - like a bunch of skinny white British nerds on Thorazine. The Stones, when they started, were a bunch of skinny white British nerds too, but they never sounded like they were on Thorazine. Even if they were.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“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, A Drink Before the War

“Civilization seems to be something we choose when it fits our purpose.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“I'm a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“I stared down the slim barrel of a gun, looked into eyes rabid with fear and hatred, and saw my reflection. Pulled the trigger to make it go away.
I heard the echoes of my gunshots, smelled the cordite, and in the smoke, I still saw my reflection and knew I always would.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Maybe that's what love is-counting the bandages until someone says, 'Enough'.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn’t a war going on. There is a war going on. It’s happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It’s fought on cement, not lawns. It’s fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn’t push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Maybe I'd move to Tibet, climb a mountain with the Dalai Lama or head to Paris and wear nothing but black, grow myself a keen goatee and talk about jazz all the time.
Or maybe I'd do what I always do - hang out and see what develops. Fatalist to the core.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“If Donald Trump puked, Copley Place is probably what would hit the toilet.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“There’s a bar around the corner. Lemme buy you a drink before the war.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“believe in God, but not as a he or a she or an it, but as something that defies my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand. I”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Another death. The more I see, the less I know.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“It’s 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.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“What’s the American way?” “Finding someone to blame,”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Finally I saw it advertised and I went to the bank for a loan. I sat through an excruciating interview with a condescending loan officer who reminded me of every bitter, high-school geek who sees his adult life as a mission to avenge adolescence by being a total prick to anyone he assumes would have treated him badly in homeroom”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“It’s a place where the people are grateful for the seasons, because at least they confirm that time is actually moving”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“concert”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“They don’t respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, “Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you,” we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of “civilization” and “security,” the false idols of our twentieth-century wet dream.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“Fucking whole country’s filled with nasty, unhappy, confused, pissed-off people, and not one of them with the brain power to honestly deal with their situation. They talk about simpler times—before there was AIDS and crack and gangs and mass communications and satellites and airplanes and global warming—like it’s something they could possibly get back to. And they can’t figure out why they’re so fucked up, so they find someone to blame. Niggers, Jews, whites, Chinks, Arabs, Russians, pro-choicers, pro-lifers—who do you got?”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War