Every Dead Thing Quotes

“Why did you shoot him?"
"You weren't around," I replied, my teeth gritted in pain. "If you'd been here I'd have shot you instead.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“For a moment they still lived and I experienced their deaths as a fresh loss with each waking, so that I was unsure whether I was a man waking from a dream of death or a dreamer entering a world of loss, a man dreaming of unhappiness or a man waking to grief.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“When she was taken from me it was like the death of a world, an infinite number of futures coming to an end.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“She was plump, with dyed red hair and a face so caked with cosmetics that the floor of the Amazon jungle probably saw more natural light...”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“I believe in evil because I have touched it, and it has touched me.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Sometimes we need our pain. We need it to call our own.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“In the end, you have to let things go. The things you regret are the things you hold on to.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Frank tried to look like he was wrestling with his conscience, although he couldn't have found his conscience without a shovel and an exhumation order.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES, only patterns we do not see.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“I slipped from present to past, sliding down the snake heads of memory into what was and what would never be again.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“The evolutionary curve obviously sloped pretty gently where Six came from.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“The beam caught the bowed head of Angel. He glanced up into Bobby Sciorra’s eyes and smiled. Sciorra looked puzzled for a moment and then his mouth opened in slow-dawning realization. He was already turning to try to locate Louis when the darkness seemed to come alive around him and his eyes widened as he realized, too late, that death had come for him too.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“We’re the world’s leading producer of serial killers. It’s a sign of sickness, is what it is. We’re sick and weak and these killers are like a cancer inside us: the faster we grow, the quicker they multiply.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“the more of us there are, the more distant from each other we become. We’re practically livin’ on top of each other but we’re further away from each other in every other way than we’ve ever been before.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Instead, I felt only a heaviness, like a dark, wet blanket over my consciousness.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“And I knew, too, that to live a life like Walter Cole’s—a life almost mundane in the pleasure it derived from small happinesses and the beauty of the familiar, but uncommon in the value it attached to them—was something to be envied.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“We entered the reserve at Slidell, a collection of shopping malls, fast food joints, and Chinese buffets on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain named for the Democratic senator John Slidell. In the 1844 federal election, Slidell arranged for two steamboats to carry a bunch of Irish and German voters from New Orleans to Plaquemines Parish to vote. There was nothing illegal about that; what was illegal was letting them vote at all the other polling stations along the route.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“WE DITCHED THE LUGGAGE at the Flaisance, despite Louis’s stated preference for the Fairmont at University Place. The Fairmont was where the Republicans usually stayed when they hit New Orleans, which was part of its appeal for Louis. He was the only gay, black, Republican criminal I knew.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“In the Louisiana of the late 1950s, racial segregation was a day-to-day reality. Even Louis Armstrong, who grew up in the city, could not perform with white musicians in New Orleans because the state of Louisiana prohibited racially integrated bands from playing in the city.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“We do not believe in evil anymore, only evil acts that can be explained away by the science of the mind. There is no evil and to believe in it is to fall prey to superstition, like checking beneath the bed at night or being afraid of the dark. But there are those for whom we have no easy answers, who do evil because that is their nature, because they are evil.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“We shared a love of Runyon and Wodehouse, of Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Donald Barthelme, the poetry of e. e. cummings, and, strangely, of the earl of Rochester, the Restoration dandy tortured by his failings: his love of alcohol and women and his inability to be the husband that he believed his wife deserved.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Toward the end, she became lucid, even with the painkillers. It happens a lot, I believe. It can fool you into thinking they’re getting better. It’s like the cancer’s small joke.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“I wanted to unburden myself of what I felt, to restore myself to some semblance of a normal existence. I wanted to rebuild but I felt frozen, suspended, by what had happened.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“It rained throughout that night, breaking the shell”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“there were things living on the bottom of ponds that were smarter than most bail jumpers.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“himself with a kind of loose-limbed”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“I returned home the evening before Adelaide Modine’s body was found and I attended the autopsy. Call it gruesome curiosity. Now, I’m sorry, Mr. Parker, but I have nothing more to say and a great deal of work to do.” He led me to the door and pushed open the screen to let me out. “You don’t seem particularly anxious to help me find Catherine Demeter, Mr. Hyams.” He breathed in heavily. “Who suggested that you talk to me, Mr. Parker?” “Alvin Martin mentioned your name.” “Mr. Martin is a good, conscientious deputy and an asset to this town, but he is still a comparatively recent arrival,” said Hyams. “The reason why I am reluctant to talk is a matter of client confidentiality. Mr. Parker, I am the only lawyer in this town. At some point, nearly everyone who lives here, regardless of color, income, religious or political belief, has passed through the door of my office. That includes the parents of the children who died. I know a great deal about what happened here, Mr. Parker, more than I might wish to know and certainly much more than I plan to share with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the end of the matter.” “I see. One more thing, Mr. Hyams.” “Yes?” he asked, wearily. “Sheriff Granger lives on this road too, doesn’t he?” “Sheriff Granger lives next door, the house on the right here. This house has never been burgled, Mr. Parker, a fact that is surely not unconnected. Good night.” He stood at the screen door as I drove away. I cast a glance at the sheriff’s house as I passed but there were no lights within and there was no car in the yard. As I drove back to Haven, raindrops began to strike the windshield and by the time I reached the outskirts of the town it had turned into a harsh, ceaseless downpour. The lights of the motel appeared through the rain. I could see Rudy Fry standing at the door, staring out into the woods and the gathering darkness beyond. By the time I had parked, Fry had resumed his position behind the reception desk. “What do folks do around here for fun, apart from trying to run other folks out of town?” I asked. Fry grimaced as he tried to separate the sarcasm from the substance of the question. “There ain’t much to do around here outside of drinking at the Inn,” he replied,”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“A veces necesitamos nuestro dolor. Lo necesitamos para considerarlo nuestro.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Al final, tu único amigo eres tú mismo porque los demás, llegado el momento, te dejarán todos en la estancada.
Al final, todos estamos solos.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing

“Al final, tu único amigo eres tú mismo porque los demás, llegado el momento, te dejarán todos en la estancadas.
Al final, todos estamos solos.”
― John Connolly, Every Dead Thing