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09b92ba
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Teddy laughed, heard the sound of it carry off on the sweep of night air and dissolve in the distant surf, as if it had never been, as if the island and the sea and the salt took what you thought you had and...
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Dennis Lehane |
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1048fe5
|
Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.
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gone-baby-gone
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Dennis Lehane |
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e48ceca
|
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.
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vanity
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Dennis Lehane |
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df13666
|
A man is the stories he tells about himself, and most of those stories are lies. Never look too closely. If you uncover his lies, it'll humiliate you both. Best just to live with the bullshit.
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Dennis Lehane |
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78eb310
|
Twelve dead?" I said. "Jesus."
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humour
jesus
inspirational
biblical
short
twelve
whatever
said
i
perhaps
brief
surprise
wit
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Dennis Lehane |
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b5cd105
|
Grief," he said, "is carnivorous. It feeds whether you're awake or not, whether you fight it or you don't. Much like cancer. And one morning you wake up and all those other emotions--joy, envy, greed, even love--are swallowed by it. And you're alone with grief, naked to it. And it owns you."
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Dennis Lehane |
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5499ba2
|
You was in all sorts of places, huh?" "Yeah, I was. Saw the world." "What'd you think of it?" "Different languages, same shit."
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Dennis Lehane |
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0e16ca4
|
It's odd how fast a beautiful woman can turn a guy's mind into lint storage. Just by being a beautiful woman.
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women
moonlight-mile
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Dennis Lehane |
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2d45c5f
|
He was done with every lie he'd ever allowed himself to believe, every lie he'd ever lived, every lie.
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society-thinking
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Dennis Lehane |
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d518a23
|
Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right." Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer. Softer. That ..
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shutter-island
regret
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Dennis Lehane |
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b9184e5
|
She had the air of someone clinging to a wall of soap.
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Dennis Lehane |
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5f2d646
|
There's darkness in this world you can't learn about by watching TV and reading books.
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Dennis Lehane |
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51412bb
|
Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.
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sadness
incarceration
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Dennis Lehane |
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f58c607
|
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.
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Dennis Lehane |
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c46a1ab
|
She was his wife, mother, best friend, sister, lover, and priest.
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mystic
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Dennis Lehane |
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b1ef25a
|
After all your years climbing around in people's heads like a cranial janitor, do you think people know why they do things? People rationalize, they turn their delusions into something romantic that they can disguise as ethics or principles or ideals. People are selfish, Doctor- odiously, monstrously, but in so small and paltry a monstrousness that we barely notice it.
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Dennis Lehane |
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80e79a3
|
When it came down to it, though, you had to remember all those assholes cutting you off in traffic and walking the streets and shouting in bars and turning their music up too loud and mugging you and raping you and selling you lemon cars-all those assholes were just children who'd aged. No miracle. Nothing sacred in that.
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Dennis Lehane |
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3b538a6
|
It was one of those sneaky days in late winter where spring came along to get a lay of the land.
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Dennis Lehane |
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7cb16ed
|
Confidence you haven't earned always has the brightest glow.
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Dennis Lehane |
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3a70281
|
The truth of himself was a lonely boy in an empty house, waiting for someone to knock on his bedroom door and ask if he was okay.
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Dennis Lehane |
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66f8f80
|
Love like that? Hell, it seems so pure, it's damn near criminal.
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Dennis Lehane |
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831c9e0
|
Maybe that's what love is-counting the bandages until someone says, 'Enough'.
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moving-on
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Dennis Lehane |
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c2ca4f6
|
You were having nightmares, Marshal. Serious nightmares." "I'm in a mental institution on an island in a hurricane," Teddy said. "Touche," Cawley said."
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Dennis Lehane |
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b9ccab6
|
The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work--at everything--because that's what growing older is.
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Dennis Lehane |
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5e950a5
|
He used it on the next guard, the one in front of the fence. He disarmed him, a kid, a baby, really, and the guard said, 'You going to kill me?' 'Jesus, kid, no,' Teddy said and snapped the butt of the rifle into the kid's temple.
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Dennis Lehane |
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c01a772
|
Brendan Harris loved everyone now because he loved Katie and Katie loved him. Brendan loved traffic and smog and the sound of jackhammers. He loved his worthless old man who hadn't sent him a single birthday or Christmas card since he'd walked out on Brendan and his mother when Brendan was six. He loved Monday mornings, sitcoms that couldn't make a retard laugh, and standing in line at the RMV. He even loved his job, though he wouldn't be g..
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Dennis Lehane |
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f4ba746
|
This terrible smallness of men was bigger than him, bigger than anything.
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pettiness
humankind
|
Dennis Lehane |
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f3c740c
|
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..
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Dennis Lehane |
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6bec33a
|
I'm a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum
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nuns
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Dennis Lehane |
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fe1d016
|
But I say their rules are bullshit. I say there are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself.
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Dennis Lehane |
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2e503c6
|
We age as the rest of the world watches, she thought, but somehow we're the last to know. There
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Dennis Lehane |
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171c457
|
Plans are just dreams until they're executed.
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Dennis Lehane |
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fec6f2d
|
My father's gone," Joe said eventually. "Emma's dead. Your brother's dead. My brothers scattered. Shit, D, you're one of the only people I know anymore. I lose you, who the fuck am I?"
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Dennis Lehane |
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eda4937
|
Things weren't ever what they were supposed to be; they were what they were, and that was the simple truth of it, a truth that didn't change just because you wanted it to.
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Dennis Lehane |
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6d3afcf
|
The loneliness of another can be shocking when it lays itself bare without warning.
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Dennis Lehane |
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ff1c73f
|
So, about the only difference I see between a thief and a banker most times is a college degree.
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Dennis Lehane |
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1142616
|
I once again felt an odd flush of admiration for my partner's faith in a religion I had long ago abandoned. She doesn't advertise it or announce it at every turn, and she has nothing but scorn for the patriarchal hierarchy that runs the church, but she nevertheless holds firm to a belief in the religion and ritual with a quiet intensity that can't be shaken.
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Dennis Lehane |
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e376bb3
|
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.
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Dennis Lehane |
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846100b
|
I'd like to say I found a sublime beauty in it all, but I didn't. And yet. And yet, this life we'd built filled our car
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Dennis Lehane |
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f16bb60
|
At that moment, Dave would have lifted a house for Jimmy, held it up to his chest until Jimmy told him where to put it down.
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Dennis Lehane |
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be4c1dc
|
When a child disappears, the space she'd occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people--relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print--create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task. "But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It's a silence that's two and a half to three feet tall, and you fee..
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kidnap
child-abuse
noir
crime
|
Dennis Lehane |
|
5c859f9
|
Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in the face or live with the comfort of ignorance and lies. And ignorance and lies were often underrated. Most people Brendan knew couldn't make it through the day without a saucerful of ignorance and a side of lies.
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|
lies
truth
|
Dennis Lehane |
|
650cbb1
|
Baby, why are you all wet?
|
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|
Dennis Lehane |
|
6520a95
|
The foghorn of Boston Light moaned across the harbor, a sound Teddy had heard every night of his childhood in Hull. The loneliest sound he knew. Made you want to hold something, a person, a pillow, yourself.
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Dennis Lehane |