Bosch Quotes

Only bad books have good endings. If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.

Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas. Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret-like, oh, throwing a book at someone else.

Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

USE COMMON SENSE. If somebody offers you a thousand dollars for this book, chances are their motives are not pure. Then again, a thousand dollars is a lot of money. Take the money and run.

But remember what I said about forgetting what I said?

It was like walking into a treasure trove of books, hoarded by pirate librarians.

If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

This book will not harm you unless someone throws it at you which is a possibilty never to be discounted.

*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.

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

Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.

Who needs to go somewhere when you can read about it.

Being an author, is being a dictator. (in a good way)

Very little in this world makes sense.

You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

Not all novelists are power-hungry madman. Some are power-hungry madwomen.

Q: Why do you like chocolate so much? A: The answer, clearly, is because I've tasted chocolate.

Before we do, I suggest you take a break. If you need to go to the bathroom, this is a good time. If you're sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow. For the magician's story, you must have all your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed.

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures?

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.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically -- any way you want to look at it -- everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.

Oh, talking is not so bad as that," said the Jester. "True, most people say only silly things when they speak. But it's easier to ignore them if you're saying silly things yourself.

Some secrets are meant to be known- but once known you can never forget them.

The name of this book is mysterious.

Please be SILENT and LISTEN. I am the SCHOOLMASTER and you are in the CLASSROOM. Just like ELEVEN PLUS TWO equals TWELVE PLUS ONE, And even a FUNERAL can be REAL FUN, You will find my DICTIONARY is quite INDICATORY. If you want to read my story, just look... THEN UNREAD.

...books were better than travel.

I ate him," said the homunculus, biting into his sausage. The kids couldn't hide their looks of horror. He smiled, sausage juice running down his chin. "Oh, don't worry - I cooked him first. I'm not a barbarian.

I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.

Better to cry wolf over and over than never to cry wolf at all.

Why did so many grown-ups want to be young, she wondered, when it took so long to grow old? It was like going on a million-mile road trip then wanting to turn around without getting out of the car.

Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.

That Hieronymus Bosch. What a weirdo.

You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children. All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for schooling - how do we know what's in those bars? And don't even get me stated on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale. Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.

Death is like an old dog. He always knows when you are at his door.

He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.

Everybody matters or nobody matters.

You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.

I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

You must have your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed.

WARNING: DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE!

If this was a normal cover for a normal book,I would tell it's FANTASTIC!GRIPPING! (according to all book covers they're fantastic and gripping)

Despite my vanity, I fear for my sanity.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.

You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.

No matter how many heavy-metal album covers you’ve seen, how many Hieronymus Bosch prints of the tortures of Hell, or even the scene in Indiana Jones where the Nazi’s face melts off, you cannot be prepared to view a body being cremated. Seeing a flaming human skull is intense beyond your wildest flights of imagination.

We create our fate everyday

Cassandra, when you want to speak to me, you should say 'Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson.' Then wait until you get my attention." "Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson. Do I have your attention now?

One dictionary defines denouement as "a final part in which everything is made clear and no questions or surprises remain." By that definition, it is exactly the wrong word to describe this chapter. This chapter will make nothing clear; it will raise many questions; and it may even contain a surprise or two. But I say we call it the denouement anyway because the words sounds so sophisticated and French.

Whether it’s chocolate or socks, the rule is the same; the darker the better.

The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.

I detest mediocrity.

Friends don't have to have a lot of things in common. But there's one thing friends usually do have in common - a sense of humor. That doesn't mean they find all the same things funny. Sometimes, they might even laugh at each other. But at the end of the day, friends can always laugh with each other.

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

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

And no one sets about saving the world unless he has first experienced the miracle of personal salvation.

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.

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.

She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top....

The first expert said he had attention deficit disorder. The second expert said the first was out of order. One said he was autistic, another that he was artistic. One said he had Tourette's syndrome. One said he had Asperger's syndrome. And one said the problem was that his parents had Munchausen syndrome. Still another said all he needed was a good old-fashioned spanking.

This new condition, this unwilled silence, had fallen over him ten days ago. The day Cass had gone into the hospital. The day she had fallen into a coma.

Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive.

Herr Bosch was purple nosed; the oxygen which by rights belonged to the veins of his face had for years gone to feed the sharp blue flame of all that liquor.

Only bad books have good endings.if a book is any good, its ending is always bad_because byou don't want the book to end.

When I was younger, I loved graveyards. They weren't spooky so much as mysterious. Each tombstone another story to uncover. Another life to learn about. Now that I'm older - I won't say how old - I hate graveyards. The only life - or rather death - I see in the tombstones is my own.

Veronica ran out to tell Amber the shocking news - and returned in less than a minute with another message for Yo-Yoji: "Amber says she was watching and she knows you got in detention on purpose," she said breathlessly. "Because you have a crush on Cass!" Cass's ears instantly turned red. Max-Ernest looked like he'd been hit by a truck.

Bosch knew the dawn had nothing on the dusk. Dawn always came up ugly, as if the sun was clumsy and in a hurry. The dusk was smoother, the moon more graceful. Maybe it was because the moon was more patient. In life and nature, Bosch thought, darkness always waits.

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

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

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

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.

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

If I do find out the Secret,I won't be able to tell it to you-you know that right?And that doesn't mean I don't trust you.It's just because I can't.Sometimes even best friends have to keep secrets from each other." -Cass

I still can't figure out if it's bravery or cowardice to take your own life. I can't figure out whether it's being selfish, or selfless. It is the ultimate act of letting go of oneself, or a cheap act of self-possession? People say a failed attempt is a cry for help. I guess that's true if the person meant it to be unsuccessful. But then, I guess most failed attempts aren't entirely sincere, because, let's face it, if you want to off yourself, there are plenty of ways to make sure it works.

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.

There was still chicken on the bone but sometimes you just have to push the plate away.

Everybody’s got a cage that keeps out the sharks. Those who open the door and venture out do so at their own risk.

Artists are supposed to stay hungry.” “That’s bullshit. That’s a myth invented to keep the artist down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they’re dangerous.

Your problem, it is not here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's throat - 'it is here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's chest. 'My heart is heavy, too. But you must be strong. This situation, it is very serious. It is not only Cass's life that is at stake. If she dies, the Secret, it will die too.

No wandering minds allowed.

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

Reasonable Doubt for a Reasonable Fee. Call the Lincoln Lawyer. Bosch

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside.

I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I'd consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It takes everything I have not to swallow them whole.

She discovered what others know only too well in a cynical way, that people prefer to believe in and worship a god who is remote rather than live out the godlike nature which is their inherent being.

Nobody in this world is who they say they are. Nobody. Not when they’re in their own room with the door shut and locked. And nobody knows anybody, no matter what they think... The best you can hope for is to know yourself. And sometimes when you do, when you see your true self, you have to turn away.

There is no end of things in the heart. ...she understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart.

Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.

if you can’t stand the ghosts, get out of the haunted house.

Politicians could talk about building walls and changing laws to keep people out, but in the end they were just symbols. Neither would stop the tide any more than the rock jetties at the mouth of the port did. Nothing could stop the tide of hope and desire. Bosch

That's justice," she said, nodding at the statue. "She doesn't hear you. She doesn't see you. She can't feel you and won't speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde.

If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you.

Whatever made her happy made me happy—except the time she thought divorcing me would make her life happier. That didn’t do much for me.

He had lived alone most of his life. He was used to places that were empty. He knew the real shelter of a home was inside yourself.

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside. Earl Briggs sits on my jury, Gloria Dayton, too. They are there with Katie and Sandy, my mother, my father, and soon Legal Siegel as well. Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me. My gods of guilt. Every day I carry on and I carry them close. Every day I step into the well before them and I argue my case.

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.

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

Loneliness had been the trash can fire he huddled around for most of his life.

I detest mediocrity. - Benjamin Blake

No matter how much they tried to dress her up with neon and family entertainment she [Las Vegas] was still a whore.

It had been Bosch’s experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified.

I felt sympathy for her but not too much. Idealism dies hard with everybody.

Bosch is great because what he imagines in color can be translated into justice.

Bosch had always thought it wasn’t a bad way to go—doing what you loved.

Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.

I make out a schoolbus...glowing orange, green, magenta, lavender, chlorine blue, every fluorescent pastel imaginable in thousands of designs, both large and small, like a cross between Fernand Liger and Dr. Strange, roaring together and vibrating off each other as if somebody had given Hieronymous Bosch fifty buckets of day-glo paint and a 1939 International Harvester schoolbus and told him to go to it.

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.

Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a killer by the toe. If his lawyer’s Haller, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Hey bro.

There are plenty of people out there judging us every day of our lives and for every move we make. The gods of guilt are many.You don't need to add to them

Sometimes when we are at our lowest points, we make the greatest discoveries.

Innocence is not a legal term. No one is ever found innocent in a court of law.

Q: What is dark chocolate?" "A: Heaven on Earth

Livingstone had said sympathy was no substitute for action. That was an essential brick in Bosch’s wall. He had built himself as a man of action and, at the moment when the integrity of his life’s work had been called into question by a man on death row, he had chosen to turn his sympathy for Elizabeth Clayton into action.

it’s like the laws of physics—for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you. You then have to decide what to do with it. How to keep yourself safe from it. How to keep it from hollowing you out.

If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with "the masters.

Never let a pickpocket bump into you if you can help it

All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society’s institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.

Walls within walls, Bosch thought. He wondered what the owners did with all of their space besides fearfully guard it.

There was more silence and Bosch pictured his partner on the other end of the line in a $900 suit and a bankrupt frown.

The good ones all had that hollow space inside. The empty place where the fire always burns. For something. Call it justice. Call it the need to know. Call it the need to believe that those who are evil will not remain hidden in darkness forever.

He knew there were two kinds of truth in this world. The truth that was the unalterable bedrock of one’s life and mission. And the other, malleable truth of politicians, charlatans, corrupt lawyers, and their clients, bent and molded to serve whatever purpose was at hand.

Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart, but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people. It is about us.

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.

There’s a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It’s a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is.

why don’t you just Uber your ass out of here.

Out of the blue and into the black is what they called going into a tunnel. Each one was a black echo. Nothing but death in there. But, still, they went.

They need you until they don’t need you.

If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?

What is the point in having a mind unless you can change it?

But there were other, vaguer, harder-to-pin-down feelings, like: a pit in the stomach that means something is either really good or really bad or both. A feeling of being old and young at once. A sense of beginnings and endings happening at the same time. A certainty that your life is changing, but an uncertainty about how it's changing and whether you want it to.

Bosch counted twenty-two names and it made him miss the old Los Angeles Times. In 1993 it was big and strong, its editions fat with ads and stories produced by a staff of some of the best and brightest journalists in their field. Now the paper looked like somebody who had been through chemo—thin, unsteady, and knowing the inevitable could only be held off for so long.

He's dead: Internal bleeding. When they opened him up they found a toothbrush shiv lodged in the anal cavity. It was never determinded whether he'd put it up there for safe keeping himself or somebody else did it for him, but it was a good lesson for the rest of the inmates. They even put up a sign. "Never put sharp objects up your ass.

The bag was a hybrid I had picked up at a store called Suitcase City while I was plotting my comeback. [...] It had a logo on it -- a mountain ridgeline with the words "Suitcase City" printed across it like the Hollywood sign. Above it, skylights swept the horizon, completing the dream image of desire and hope. I think that logo was the real reason I liked the bag. Because I knew Suitcase City wasn't a store. It was a place. It was Los Angeles.

I put my hand down below the table to check my zipper. You have to stand before a jury only once with your fly open and it will never happen again

But too much going with the flow is heading us into the sewer...

If you get into a game of talking to the media, you keep the story alive. Information is oxygen. Without it they die.

Swag?” “Scientific wild ass guess.

* If mind control sounds appealing to you, congratulations - you're well on your way to being a writer!

you can’t explain crazy.

Sometimes when we are at our lowest points, we make our greatest discoveries.

For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.

when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

one of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a matching band in a world somewhere else.

from the short story, Cielo Azul “Harry, get an ambulance.” I stood up and stepped back from the scene. I felt my chest growing tight, a clarity of thought coming over me. In all my years I had spoken for the dead many times. I had avenged the dead. I was at home with the dead. But I had never so clearly had a part in pulling someone away from the outstretched hands of death. And in that moment I knew we had done just that. And I knew that whatever happened afterward and wherever my life took me, I would always have this moment, that it would be a light that could lead me out of the darkest of tunnels.

Happily, you don’t know how to find me. If you did, I’ve no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you’ve probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever. I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese.

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance. Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be.

The civilized people in the world, the ones who hide behind culture and art and politics… and even the law, they’re the ones to watch out for. They’ve got that perfect disguise goin’ for them, you know? But they’re the most vicious. They’re the most dangerous people on earth.

The idea of a clean war, like that of a clean bomb or an intelligent missile, this whole war conceived as a technological extrapolation of the brain is a sure sign of madness. It is like those characters in Hieronymus Bosch with a glass bell or a soap bubble around their head as a sign of their mental debility. A war enclosed in a glass coffin, like Snow White, purged of any carnal contamination or warrior's passion. A clean war which ends up in an oil slick.

I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away.” “What is the other, Henrik?” Though he knew the answer. “Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch.” Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for. “So am I, Henrik,” he said. “So am I.” - "The Burning Room" by Michael Connelly

In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.

Breathe it in. This is your moment. This is your stage. Want it. Own it. Take it.

Because it’s a hot door and we have to be careful. You never open a door on a burning room.

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.

Through studying the past we learn our future.

Shouldn’t death be the relief from the tortures of life?

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

You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong.

The black heart does not beat alone.

Darkness waits. All things come to the dark.

The pages were yellowed and had gone to brown at the edges. They were brittle, much like the memories the photos evoked.

Artists never thrive in colonies.

Between laughs I could hear my mother’s words ringing in my ears. “Why don't you write something that will sell?

All these years in the straight life and she still had a whore’s pride.

The rich kept you waiting so that you could feel free to admire all that they had.

He defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?

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

He knew evil could never be vanquished. It just moved from one place to another and waited.

If you’re sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow.

I have always had the suspicion that officers assigned to front desk duty were chosen by cunning supervisors because of their skills in obfuscation and disinformation.

the most likely place that elected politicians ran afoul of the law was in the area of money.

Big Sur? Why it's just like every other place! . . . a profound truth, since a place is only what you make it, what you bring to it.

where there’s government subsidy, there is always corruption.

Mounted on the wall beneath the fish was a brass plate. It said: IF I’D KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT I WOULDN’T BE HERE

I'm going to have to go out there. She had a mother and a brother. See who's still around and can look at this thing." "Harry, you sure you--" "You think I have a choice?

You build a city in the desert, water it with false hopes and false idols, and eventually this is what happens. The desert reclaims it, turns it arid, leaves it barren. Human tumbleweeds drift across its streets, predators hide in the rocks.

All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed on the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn’t know he had. In that moment he knew he was both saved and lost. He would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew. - "Nine Dragons" by Michael Connelly

The ideal community, in a sense, would be the loose, fluid aggregation of individuals who elected to be alone and detached in order to be at one with themselves and all that lives and breathes. It would be a God-filled community, even if none of its members believe in (a) God. It would be a paradise, even though the word had long disappeared from our vocabulary.

The llama was wearing a bridle with a rope attached where you might expect to find reins. A greeting card was hanging from his neck: 'Hola Como se llama? Yo me llamo C. Llama.' During his preschool years, Clay's favorite cartoon had featured a Spanish-speaking boy naturalist who was always saving animals with his girl cousin, and Clay still knew enough of the language to translate: 'Hello. How do you call yourself? I call myself Como C. Llama.' The llama's name is What is your name?

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chose. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.

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.

. . . They had skies of pure azure and walls of fog moving in and out of the canyons with invisible feet, hills in winter of emerald green and in summer mountain upon mountain of pure gold. They had even more, for there was ever the unfathomable silence of the forest, the blazing immensity of the Pacific, days drenched with sun and nights spangled with stars. . .

If the Church is ‘in Christ,’ she is involved in mission. Her whole existence then has a missionary character. Her conduct as well as her words will convince the unbelievers and put their ignorance and stupidity to silence.

There is one other thing to know … when you have expressed yourself to the fullest, then and only then will it dawn upon you that everything has already been expressed, not in words alone but in deed, and that all you need really do is say Amen!

WARNING: DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE! Good. Now I know I can trust you. You’re curious. You’re brave. And you’re not afraid to lead a life of crime. But let’s get something straight: if, despite my warning, you insist on reading this book, you can’t hold me responsible for the consequences. And, make no bones about it, this is a very dangerous book. No, it won’t blow up in your face. Or bite your head off. Or tear you limb from limb. It probably won’t injure you at all. Unless somebody throws it at you, which is a possibility that should never be discounted. Generally speaking, books don’t cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems. Books can, for example, give you ideas. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an idea before, but, if you have, you know how much trouble an idea can get you into. Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas. Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret – like, oh, throwing a book at someone else. But the main reason this book is so dangerous is that it concerns a secret. A big secret.

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.

I HAVE A SECRET I CAN’T TELL NOR INK; THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK. THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR; WHEN IT’S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE. THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR; THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR. IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU’RE INCORRECT, AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT. THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS, FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE.

It was a good strategy but this is where I intended to turn her plans upside-down. In the courtroom there are three things for the lawyer to always consider: the knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Whether at the prosecution or defense table, it is the lawyer’s job to master the first two and always be prepared for the third.

You can become unhinged and cut loose from the world. You can believe you are a permanent outsider. But the innocence of a child will bring you back and give you the shield of joy with which to protect yourself. I have learned this late in life but not too late. It’s never too late.

There was something pitiful about a woman in jail. I had found that almost all of the time, their crimes could be traced back to men. Men who took advantage of them, abused them, deserted them, hurt them. This is not to say they were not responsible for their actions or that some of them did not deserve the punishments they received. There were predators among the female ranks that easily rivaled those among the males. But, even still, the women I saw in jail seemed so different from the men in the other tower. The men still lived by wiles and strength. The women had nothing left by the time they locked the door on them.

He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in. There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.

The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.

This is the lone-American type I admire, the kind I believe in, can get along with, and whom I vote for even though he’s never nominated for office. The democratic man our poets sang of but who, alas, is being rapidly exterminated, along with the buffalo, the moose and the elk, the great bear, the eagle, the condor, the mountain lion. The sort of American that never starts a war, never raises a feud, never draws the color line, never tries to lord it over his fellow-man, never yearns for higher education, never holds a grudge against his neighbor, never treats an artist shabbily and never turns a beggar away. Often untutored and unlettered, he sometimes has more of the poet and the musician in him, philosopher too, than those who are acclaimed as such. His whole way of life is aesthetic. What marks him as different, sometimes ridiculous, is his serenity and originality. That he aspires to be none other than himself, is this not the essence of wisdom?

The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies. "Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?" "You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys." Rachel smiled. "You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging.