Quotes from Un dernier verre avant la guerre

Dennis Lehane ·  368 pages

Rating: (31.3K votes)


“That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“The world according to Bubba is simple - if it aggravates you, stop it. By whatever means necessary.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre



“This was the photograph, I knew, that had already burned its way into my dreams and my shadows, into that part of my mind that I have no control over. Its image would reappear in all its wanton cruelty for the rest of my life, particularly when I was least prepared for it.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“We met when we were both majoring in Space Invaders with a Pub Etiquette minor at the Happy Harbor Campus of UMass/Boston.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“I stared down the slim barrel of a gun, looked into eyes rabid with fear and hatred, and saw my reflection. Pulled the trigger to make it go away.
I heard the echoes of my gunshots, smelled the cordite, and in the smoke, I still saw my reflection and knew I always would.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“I'm a detective, but nuns could stonewall Sam Spade into an asylum”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre



“Maybe that's what love is-counting the bandages until someone says, 'Enough'.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn’t a war going on. There is a war going on. It’s happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It’s fought on cement, not lawns. It’s fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn’t push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“It never works that way. Once that ugliness has been forced into you, it becomes part of your blood, dilutes it, races through your heart and back out again, staining everything as it goes. The ugliness never goes away, never comes out, no matter what you do. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. All you can do is hope to control it.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“New Music, I guess, is all those bands Angie listens to. They have names like Depeche Mode and The Smiths and all they sound the same to me - like a bunch of skinny white British nerds on Thorazine. The Stones, when they started, were a bunch of skinny white British nerds too, but they never sounded like they were on Thorazine. Even if they were.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“Civilization seems to be something we choose when it fits our purpose.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre



“Another death. The more I see, the less I know.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“If Donald Trump puked, Copley Place is probably what would hit the toilet.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“Permitidme que os invite a un trago antes de la guerra.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“There’s a bar around the corner. Lemme buy you a drink before the war.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“En mis primeros recuerdos aparece el fuego.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre



“That’s the thing about being a victim; you start to think it’ll happen to you on a regular basis. Suddenly everything looks suspect and any brightness you may have noticed the day before has dissipated into the shadows. And the shadows are everywhere. It’s living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“It’s impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


“Le dí un beso y ella me lo devolvió.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Un dernier verre avant la guerre


About the author

Dennis Lehane
Born place: in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, The United States
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