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Book: Mystic River
Quotes of Book: Mystic River

Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Over his mother's shoulder, Jimmy saw his father stumble out of the house, his clothes wrinkled and his face puffy with sleep or booze or both...His mother followed Jimmy's gaze and when she looked back at him, she was worn out again, the smile gone so completely from her face, you'd have been surprised she knew how to make one.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
You felt it in your soul, no place else. You felt the truth there sometimes-beyond logic-and you were usually right if it was a type of truth that was the exact kind you didn't want to face, weren't sure you could. That's what you tried to ignore, why you went to psychiatrists and spent too long in bars and numbed your brain in front of TV tubes-to hide from hard, ugly truths your soul recognized long before your mind caught up.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
organs softening. "Trooper," Friel said, "You know what I like even less than ten-year-old black boys getting shot by bullshit gang-war crossfire?" Sean knew the answer, but he didn't say anything. "Nineteen-year-old white girls getting murdered in my parks. People don't say 'Oh, the vagaries of economics' then. They don't feel a wistful sense of the tragic. They feel pissed and they want somebody to be led onto the six o'clock in shackles." Friel nudged Sean. "I mean, right?" "Right." "That's what they want, because they're us and that's what we want." Friel grasped Sean's shoulder so he'd look
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Sean turned from the rearview, watched the lights on the other side of the highway for a bit. They came in their direction like bullet eyes, streaked past them like hazy ribbons, blurring into one another. He felt the city girded all around them, with its high-rises and tenements and office towers and parking garages, arenas and nightclubs and churches, and he knew that if one of those lights went out, it wouldn't make any difference. And if a new light came on, no one would notice. And yet, they pulsed and glowed and shimmied and flared and stared at you, just like now-staring in at his and Whitey's own lights as they blipped past on the expressway, just one more set of red and yellow lights streaking along amid a current of red and yellow lights that blipped, blipped, blipped through an unremarkable Sunday dusk. Toward where? Toward the extinguished lights, dummy. Toward the shattered glass.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Unaware, then, how short futures could be. How quick they could disappear, leave you with nothing but a long-ass present that held no surprises, no reason for hope, nothing but days that bled into one another with so little impact that another year was over and the calendar page in the kitchen was still stuck on March.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
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.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Me, either. What
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you'd dated in high school- a woman you'd loved and lost- danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let's dream just one more time.
book-quote hope pain misery
Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Jimmy looked back over at his wife, and Celeste could feel the tenderest of aches in the look. She could feel another teardrop piece of Jimmy's heart detach and free-fall down the inside of his chest.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
The driver got out. He looked like a cop-blond crew cut, red face, white shirt, black-and-gold nylon tie, the heft of his gut dropping over his belt buckle like a stack of pancakes. The other one looked sick. He was skinny and tired-looking and stayed in his seat, one hand gripping his skull through greasy black hair, staring into the side-view mirror as the three boys came around near the driver's door. The beefy one crooked a finger at them, then wiggled it toward his chest until they stood in front of him.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
Four in the morning, and she was more awake than she'd been in years. She was Christmas-morning-when-you're-eight kind of awake. Her blood was caffeine. Your whole life, you wished for something like this. You told yourself you didn't, but you did. To be involved in a drama. And not the drama of unpaid bills and minor, shrieking marital squabbles. No. This was real life, but bigger than real life. This was hyper-real. Her husband may have killed a bad man. And if that bad man really was dead, the police would want to find out who did it. And if the trail actually led here, to Dave, they'd need evidence.
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Dennis Lehane _ Mystic River
In the shower he felt it coming again-that old wave of sadness, the one that felt ancient and had been with him since he could remember, an awareness that tragedy loomed somewhere in his future, tragedy as heavy as limestone blocks. As if an angel had told him his future while he was still in the womb, and Jimmy had emerged from the womb with the angel's words planted somewhere in his mind, but faded from his lips.Jimmy raised his eyes to the shower spray. He said without speaking: I know in my soul I contributed to my child's death. I can feel it. But I don't know how.
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