Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a lot worse. All we need.- Why is that?- What’s that, Marshal?- The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?- I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out.- How come?- Well, you think about it—the moon affects the tide, right?- Sure.- Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water.- I’ll buy that.- Human brain,- Trey said, - is over fifty percent water.- No kidding?- No kidding. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.

— Dennis Lehane

Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.

— Dennis Lehane

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 walked "power" barbarically, so the world would not find them out

— Dennis Lehane

He’d never wanted kids. Outside of priority boarding on an airline, he couldn’t see the upside to them. They took over your life and filled you with terror and weariness and people acted like having one was a blessed event and talked about them in the reverent tones they once reserved for gods. When it came down to it, though, you had to remember that 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.

— Dennis Lehane

He was broad-shouldered, dark-haired and dark-eyed; more than once, women had been noted openly regarding him, and not just immigrant women or those who smoked in public.

— Dennis Lehane

How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “I don’t know. How many?” “Eight.” “Why?” “Oh, stop overanalyzing it.

— Dennis Lehane

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?

— Dennis Lehane

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 or she or an, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand.

— Dennis Lehane

I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.

— Dennis Lehane

I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isn’t the least understandable thing you can do.

— Dennis Lehane