John Connolly Quotes

Evil, unlike good, is constantly at war with those most like itself, and ambition is its spur.

~ John Connolly

After all this time, he had hope, and then hope was gone, and he hates himself for giving in to hope. He, who exists only to kill the hopes of others, could not destroy the hope within himself.

~ John Connolly

Wickedness never rests easily so, in a way, one might almost feel pity for the wicked, for they are destined to live their lives in fear, in a prison of the heart.

~ John Connolly

My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man's.

~ John Connolly

People who believe in buried gods,’ said Louis.‘Do you believe in buried gods, Detective Walsh?’‘I’m Episcopalian. I believe in everything.

~ John Connolly

Know a man by his metaphors.

~ John Connolly

And, in the darkness, David closed his eyes as all that was lost was found again.

~ John Connolly

The trick was not to stifle the emotions, but to control them. Love, anger, grief – all were weapons in their way, but they needed to be kept in check.

~ John Connolly

Law and justice are not the same.

~ John Connolly

Most of the bad situations I've encountered began with the best of intentions.

~ John Connolly

‎Sarge, mr. Nurd here is threatening to turn me to jelly.really? said Sarge. what flavor?

~ John Connolly

Stories come alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth. Or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

~ John Connolly

These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside.

~ John Connolly

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

~ John Connolly

Stories come alive in the telling. (…)They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read.

~ John Connolly

Story! The dwarf snorted. You'll be talking about happily ever after next. Do we look happy? There's no happily ever after for us. Miserabily ever after, more like.

~ John Connolly

Perhaps it's true that all men love their fathers, no matter how terrible the things they do to their sons: there is a part of us that remains forever in debt to those responsible for our existence.

~ John Connolly

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

~ John Connolly

You pay by the hour, even if the job only takes five minutes. I don’t do fractions.

~ John Connolly

The law doesn't require truth, only the appearance of it. Most cases simply rest on a version of it that's acceptable to both sides. You want to know the only truth is? Everybody lies.--Elwin Stark

~ John Connolly

We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.Where, Purgatory? said Dozy. We're in Hell.

~ John Connolly

There was a lot to be said for a man’s capacity to be comfortable while alone.

~ John Connolly

And the Crooked Man heard her dreams, because that was where he wandered. His place was the land of the imagination, the world where stories began. The stories were always looking for a way to be told, to be brought to life through books and reading. That was how they crossed over from their world into ours. But with them came the Crooked Man, prowling between his world and ours, looking for stories of his own to create, hunting for children who dreamed bad dreams, who were jealous and angry and proud. And he made kings and queens of them, cursing them with a kind of power, even if the real power lay always in his hands. And in return they betrayed the objects of their jealousy to him, and he took them into his lair deep beneath the castle...

~ John Connolly

Slow animals always become prey in the end.

~ John Connolly

A demon obsessed with being human is a demon no longer

~ John Connolly

They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels weren't entirely sure that this was a good thing.

~ John Connolly

What's seldom is wonderful.

~ John Connolly

And Nurd, who had never had a mother and father, and who had never loved or been loved, marvelled at the ways in which feeling so wonderful could also leave one open to so much pain. In a strange way, he envied Samuel even that. He wanted to care about someone so much that it could hurt.

~ John Connolly

If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.

~ John Connolly

Dogs were generally incompatible with melancholy.

~ John Connolly

She had not given me the cross to keep the bad men away, as a child might have been expected to do. No, in her mind the bad men could not be kept away. They were coming, and they would have to be faced.

~ John Connolly

He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun.

~ John Connolly

A condensed Shakespeare with all of the dull parts removed, leaving only the great moments of drama: ghosts, and bloodied daggers, and dying kings.

~ John Connolly

But don't they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere.'They?' Who are 'they?'I don't know. Just people.That's what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. 'All is fair.' 'The end justifies the means.' Is that what you believe?

~ John Connolly

But he was wounded, and tired, and winter was still upon him.

~ John Connolly

It’s a full-time job being homeless. It’s a full-time job being poor.

~ John Connolly

I used to think this was all about good and evil,” said Rickett, “but it’s not.”“No?”“There’s a kind of evil that isn’t even in opposition to good, because good is an irrelevance to it. It’s a foulness that’s right at the heart of existence, born with the stuff of the universe. It’s in the decay to which all things tend. It is, and it always will be, but in dying we leave it behind.”“And while we’re alive?”“We set our souls against it, and our saints and angels, too.” He patted Parker on the shoulder. “Especially the destroying ones.

~ John Connolly

Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.

~ John Connolly

The only person who needs to know about failure is yourself.

~ John Connolly

I feel that I'll be buried in Ireland and don't think I'll ever live in the U.S. I'm not comfortable with many aspects of U.S. society - especially the justice system.

~ John Connolly