Dennis Lehane Quotes & Sayings

“Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.”

“I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.”

“It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.”

“The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.”

“Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this writing job.”

“I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.”

“I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.”

“I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.”

“I sort of play golf because a lot of my friends are into it, but I'm awful - my handicap is about six or seven thousand.”

“Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.”