Michael Connelly Quotes

Enjoy the top 193 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Michael Connelly.

“It had been one of the biggest landgrabs in the citys history and Bosch knew the story well, having tried all his life to counter his love of baseball and the Dodgers with the ugly story buried beneath the diamond where, as a boy, he watched Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch. It seemed to him that every gleaming success in the city had a dark seam to it somewhere, usually just out of view.”
— Michael Connelly —

“There is no client as scary as an innocent man.
J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.”

— Michael Connelly

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

— Michael Connelly

“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.”

— Michael Connelly

“Don't go growing a conscience on me," I said. "I've been down that road. It doesn't lead you to anything good.”

— Michael Connelly

“Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.”

— Michael Connelly

“There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.”

— Michael Connelly

“You're a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wifes and an eight-year-old daughter and we all love you.”

— Michael Connelly

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left.

— Michael Connelly

“I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.”

— Michael Connelly

“I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.”

— Michael Connelly

I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.

— Michael Connelly

“In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.”

— Michael Connelly

“I think there'd be huge losses if there weren't newspapers. I know everything's shifting to the Internet and some people would say, 'News is news, what you're talking about is a change of consumption, not the product that's out there.' But I think there is a change.”

— Michael Connelly

“I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.”

— Michael Connelly

“I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.”

— Michael Connelly

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.

— Michael Connelly

“It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.”

— Michael Connelly

“I'm relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.”

— Michael Connelly

“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.”

— Michael Connelly

“There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys
prosecution and defense
dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.”

— Michael Connelly

“You don't like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.”

— Michael Connelly

“The world was full of people who could not get over things. There was no closure and there was no peace. The truth did not set you free. But you could get through things. That's what Bosch would tell him. You could head toward the light and climb and dig and fight your way out of the hole.”

— Michael Connelly

“Fulgoni gave me a look that I interpreted as a warning that I was crossing into a territory that he had deemed off-limits when we had last discussed his testimony. I gave him a look back that said too fucking bad. I have you under oath. I own you.”

— Michael Connelly

“Don't worry, I'm not going to hold it against you when you end up wrong.”

— Michael Connelly

“It had been one of the biggest landgrabs in the city's history and Bosch knew the story well, having tried all his life to counter his love of baseball and the Dodgers with the ugly story buried beneath the diamond where, as a boy, he watched Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch. It seemed to him that every gleaming success in the city had a dark seam to it somewhere, usually just out of view.”

— Michael Connelly

“Aronson was getting at the fine line between seeking the truth and seeking a verdict in your client's favor. They weren't always the same thing.”

— Michael Connelly

“So, what it's like, Terry? Being a father."
...
"It's like having a gun to your head all the time. Because I know if anything happens to her, anything, then my life is over.”

— Michael Connelly

“People are the worst animals," Rider said. "They will do anything to each other. Just to indulge their fantasies.”

— Michael Connelly

“I quickly crossed the room”

— Michael Connelly

“Getting a not-guilty verdict was a long shot. Even when you knew in your gut that you were sitting next to an innocent man at the defense table, you also knew that the NGs came grudgingly from a system designed only to deal with the guilty.”

— Michael Connelly

“We want the truth, Detective. You are confusing that with what we choose to tell the public.”

— Michael Connelly

Somebody once called the media the merchants of chaos.

— Michael Connelly

“All his life he believed he was slumming toward something good.”

— Michael Connelly

Play fair, Haller." "It's not a fair game. Did she tell you

— Michael Connelly

“This kid his asshole, then that's the cost. But”

— Michael Connelly

“Executive assistant. "Mrs. Albrecht, how are you today?" "Very well. I just got here and thought maybe I had missed you." "Nope. I just got here too." "Come in, please." The house had a two-story entry area”

— Michael Connelly

“It was every detective's nightmare. The worst-case scenario. A lead ignored or bungled, allowing something awful to be loose in the world. Something dark and evil, destroying life after life as it moved through the shadows. It was true that all detectives made mistakes and had to live with the regrets. But Bosch instinctively knew that this one was malignant. It would grow and grow inside until it darkened everything and he became the last victim, the last life destroyed.”

— Michael Connelly

“Bosch knew that department policy held that deadly force was justified if it was used to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to an officer or a citizen. Mendenhall was not required to identify herself or give Ellis the opportunity to drop his weapon.”

— Michael Connelly

“I spread my arms wide like a minister in front of his flock.
"My pulpit is the well of the courtroom. I preach to the twelve apostles, the gods of guilt."
Valenzula casually looked at me.
"Yeah, well, whatever. It's still pretty low and you should be ashamed of your ass. Almost as low as you racing out here ahead of me and hiding in there, telling her not to answer the door."
I nodded. He had it all figured out. I signaled him off the hood of the car.
"Well, Val, Ms. Roberts is now my client and I am authorized to accept the subpoena from Fulgoni on her behalf."
He slid off the car, dragging the wallet chain looped from his belt to his back pocket along the paint.
"Oh, geez, my fucking bad. I hope I didn't scratch it, Reverend.”

— Michael Connelly

“With the money from the legal settlement, he hires a beautiful young woman from the local university to type for him as he orally composes the sentences. But soon he realizes she is editing and rewriting what he tells her before she even types it in. And what dawns on him is that she is the better writer. Soon he sits mute in the room while she writes. He only watches. He wants to kill her, strangle her with his hands. But he can't move his hands to do it. He is in hell.”

— Michael Connelly

“It is an amazing thing to be able to hold everything that is important to you in one arm.”

— Michael Connelly

And what's with all the names on the new list? I've got kids I'd like to spend time with tonight."
"Give it to Lankford. He has the time. I think he ate his kids.

— Michael Connelly

“I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.”

— Michael Connelly

“I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.”

— Michael Connelly

“When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them.”

— Michael Connelly

“I'm not 'Mr. No-By-The-Book.' I just want to make sure the character is by the book.”

— Michael Connelly

“How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.”

— Michael Connelly

“I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.”