The Given Day Quotes

“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Your first family is your blood family and you always be true to that. That means something. But there's another family and that's the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they're as much blood as your first family. Maybe more so, because they don't have to look out for you and they don't have to love you. They choose to.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“What molds us is what maims us.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J.P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?...Gods don't think they can become men.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“He was done with every lie he'd ever allowed himself to believe, every lie he'd ever lived, every lie.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“But Curtis had come to the table with something they’d never expected, something they would have thought outmoded and out-lived in the modern age: a kind of fundamental righteousness that only the fundamental possessed. Unfettered by doubt, it achieved the appearance of moral intelligence and a resolute conscience. The terrible thing was how small it made you feel, how weaponless. How could you fight righteous rage if the only arms you bore were logic and sanity?”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“he'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they this weilded "power" barbarically so the world would not find them out”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Danny would have thought it comical if it had come from any other source, on any other day, in any other country. But Curtis had come to the table with something they'd never expected, something they would have thought outmoded and outlived in the modern age: a kind of fundamental righteousness that only the fundamental possessed. Unfettered by doubt, it achieved the appearance of moral intelligence and a resolute consciousness. The terrible thing was how small it made you feel, how weaponless. How could you fight righteous rage if the only arms you bore were logic and sanity?”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Music”—he smiled his glorious smile and raised his index finger—“music speaks for the soul because words are too small.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“You‘ve always had a soft heart, son. You just hide it better than most." Danny shrugged. "Starting to hide it from myself, then, I guess." "Always the danger, that. Then one day, sure, you can‘t remember where you left all those pieces you tried so hard to hold on. Or why you work so hard at the holding.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“This terrible smallness of men was bigger than him, bigger than anything.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“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’d get to a plea for human kindness would be the amen of a shotgun pointed in his face.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“It was one of those sneaky days in late winter where spring came along to get a lay of the land.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Rumors or no, Thomas, if the men strike, we'll see fecal gravity at work like never before. Ain't a man in this room who won't be covered in shit.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“On September 7th, after the Cubs dropped Game Three, the two teams boarded the Michigan Central together to embark on the twenty-seven hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“You can have two families in this life, Joe, the one you’re born to and the one you build.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“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 heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Whadaya say, Gidge? Think your new friends would mind if one of us played a few? Keep hearing how good these nigras are supposed to be. Run faster’n butter on the porch in July is the rumor.” The man held out his hands to Babe. He was one of the few no one recognized, must have been a bench warmer. Big hands, though, a flattened nose and axe-head shoulders, the man all hard boxy angles. Had eyes Luther’d seen before in the white poor—spent his whole life eating rage in place of food. Developed a taste for it he wouldn’t lose no matter how regular he ate for the rest of his life.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Said, My whole fucking family, you believe that shit? A week ago we all in the pink, eating dinner ’round the table—my son and daughter-in-law, my daughter and son-in-law, three grandchildren, and Bess. Just sitting and eating and jawing. And then, then, it was like God Hisself reached through the roof and into their house and closed his hand ’round the whole family and squeezed. Like we was flies on the table, he said. Like that.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Your first family is your blood family and you always be true to that. That means something. But there’s another family and that’s the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they’re as much blood as your first family. Maybe more so, because they don’t have to look out for you and they don’t have to love you. They choose to.” “So”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Craftsmanship, his Uncle Cornelius had once told him, was just a fancy word for what happened when labor met love.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“If a man was lucky, he was moving toward something his whole life.”
― dennis lehane, The Given Day

“how completely a man could step on his own dick when what he thought he wanted contradicted what he knew he needed.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“And yet, at some point, they’d be sent out into the world to make their way, and it had overwhelmed Babe this morning, just sucked the juice out of him.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Pendant la guerre, ils étaient morts par millions pour un enjeu qui se réduisait à une lutte de territoire. Et aujourd'hui, dans toutes les rues du monde, la même bataille se poursuivait. Aujourd'hui, c'était Boston. Demain, ce serait ailleurs. Les pauvres contre les pauvres. Comme ils l'avaient toujours fait. Comme on les encourageait enfin. Non, rien ne changerait jamais. Il le comprenait enfin. Non, rien ne changerait jamais.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Some men winked at Thomas or tipped their hats and he returned the gestures because he knew they didn’t see him as The Enemy, knowing he was far too slippery to be caught holding fast to either side of a fence. They mistrusted him as a matter of course, that was a given, but he caught the glint of admiration in their eyes, admiration and some fear, but no hate. He was a giant in the BPD, yes, but he wore it lightly. Displays of vanity, after all, were the province of minor gods.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“He’d lost all connection with her over the years, made his peace with a warmth that lived occasionally in her voice but rarely in her eyes, because the eyes alit on nothing, seemed instead to always be tilted slightly up, as if she were conversing with her own mind and nothing else. He didn’t know this woman. He was reasonably sure he loved her, because of time, because of attrition, but time had also robbed them of each other, fostered within a relationship based on itself and nothing more, no different from that of a saloon keeper and his most frequent patron. You loved out of habit and lack of brighter options.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“Since his election, he had done nothing, absolutely nothing of note, while his cabinet had pillaged the till with such shamelessness that it was only a matter of time before the looting hit the front pages and gave birth to the sworn enemy of politics since the dawn of man: illumination.”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day

“They walked up West Broadway to Sol’s Dining Car at the corner of C Street. Sol had just recently added the frankfurter to his menu. He’d refused to do so during the war because the meat sounded too German and he had, like most restaurants during the war, taken great pains to change the name of frankfurters to “Liberty Sausages” on his menu board. But now the Germans were beaten, and there were no hard feelings about it in South Boston, and most of the diners in the city were trying hard to catch up”
― Dennis Lehane, The Given Day