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The Poet Quotes
The Poet
by
Michael Connelly108,946 ratings, 4.23 average rating, 4,601 reviews
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The Poet Quotes
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“In the long run, all wrongs are righted, every minus is equalized with a plus, the columns are totaled and the totals are found correct. But that's in the long run. We must live in the short run and matters are often unjust there. The compensating for us of the universe makes all the accounts come out even, but they grind down the good as well as the wicked in the process.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it's the cause that is usually most vilified.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“I once read a book about a reporter written by a reporter who described the life as always running in front of a thresher. I thought it was the most accurate description I’d read.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Writing does for me what you got in that glass does for you. If I can write about it, I can understand it. And I can put it in the ground. That’s all I want to do.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Every day you fight death with life and what is more vital in life than the physical act of love?”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker--somber and sympathetic about it when I'm with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I'm alone.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“His eyes strayed past us to the television. On the program they were now selling a glove with small rubber bristles on the palm for grooming pets. “I know what else you could use that for,” Adkins said. He made a masturbation motion with his hand and winked and smiled at Thompson. “That’s what they’re really selling that for, you know.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“You ever heard of the Painted Desert, Jack?” I looked at him, my eyes squinted in confusion. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” “Been there?” “No.” “Well, if you’re with Rachel, then you’re there now. She’s the Painted Desert. Beautiful to look at, yeah. But, man, once you’re there, she’s desolate. There’s nothing there past the beauty, Jack, and it gets cold at night in the desert.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“William Gladden’s eyes scanned the happy faces as they moved past him. It was like a giant vending machine. Take your pick. Don’t like him? Here comes another. Will she do?”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“I marveled at the hold of some memories and at how well and precisely they can be relived.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“I thought she had an interest in me, though I had never responded to her on anything other than the professional level. You have to be careful and be sure. You make a wanted advance and you’re cool. You make an unwanted advance and you get a personnel complaint. My view is that it’s better just to avoid the whole thing.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Why is it, I wondered, that it is the ones who mean so much that are the hardest to reach out to?”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“I hadn’t told her the ending, that the girl was Riley and that the boy she went out with and then married was my brother. I didn’t know why I had left that part out.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“gone to Gladden’s home in a rage after his five-year-old son revealed that he had been molested by”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“After my sister’s death twenty years before, something in them changed toward me. It seemed that I, as the survivor of the accident, was suspect for having done just that. Survived. I am also sure that since that time I have continued to disappoint them in the choices I have made. I think of these as small disappointments accruing over time like interest in a bank account until it was enough for them to comfortably retire on.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reins”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Bledsoe, officials said, went to his partner’s apartment, destroyed a note he found in the dead detective’s shirt pocket and altered other aspects of the crime scene to make it appear that McCafferty had been killed by an intruder who had grabbed the detective’s gun. Police said’—Do you want me to keep reading, Jack?” “Yeah, go ahead.” “ ‘Police said Bledsoe went so far as to fire an additional shot into McCafferty’s body, striking him in the upper leg. Bledsoe then told Susan McCafferty to call 911 and he left the apartment, feigning surprise when he was later informed that his partner was dead. In killing himself, McCafferty had apparently already fired one shot into”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“What’s that line that Nietzsche said? ‘Whoever fights monsters…’ ” “ ‘Should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Poe is credited with being the father of detective fiction with the publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“Maybe sometimes vengeance is just as good as justice,” he said. “They’re pretty much the same if you ask me.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than the cause, though it’s the cause that is usually the most vilified.”
― The Poet
― The Poet
“John Brooks.’ Immediately, I thought of the odds. First of just surviving in such a place, next of surviving and then becoming a cop. ‘Vertical ghettos, each one of them. Me and John used to say it was the only time when you had to take the elevator up when you were going to hell.’ I just nodded. This was out of my realm completely. ‘And that’s only if the elevators were working,’ he added. I realized that I never considered that Brooks might be a black man. There was no photo in the computer printouts and no reason to mention race in the stories. I had just assumed he was white and it was an assumption I would have to analyze later. At the moment, I was trying to figure out what Washington was trying to tell me by taking me here. Washington pulled into a lot next to one of the buildings. There were a couple of dumpsters coated with decades of graffiti slogans. There was a rusted basketball backboard but the rim was long gone. He put the car in park but left it running. I didn’t know if that was to keep the heat flowing or to allow us a quick getaway if needed. I saw a small group of teenagers in long coats, their faces as dark as the sky, scurry from the building closest to us, then cross a frozen courtyard and hustle into one of the other buildings. ‘At this point you’re wondering what the hell you’re doing here,’ Washington said then. ‘That’s okay, I understand. A white boy like you.’ Again I said nothing. I was letting him run out his line. ‘See that one, third on the right. That was our building. I was on fourteen with my grand-auntie and John lived with his mother on twelve, one below us. They didn’t have no thirteen, already enough bad luck ’round here. Neither of us had fathers. At least ones that showed up.’ I thought he wanted me to say something but I didn’t know what. I had no earthly idea what kind of struggle the two friends must have had to make it out of the tombstone of a building he had pointed at. I remained mute. ‘We were friends for life. Hell, he ended up marrying my first girlfriend, Edna. Then on the department, after we both made homicide and trained with senior detectives for a few years, we asked to be partnered. And damn, it got approved. Story about us in the”
― The Poet
― The Poet
