Quotes by John Connolly

“This development is necessary to help the free flow of traffic along the Seamus Quirke Road and to put a stop to the rat-running of traffic through residential areas such a Shantalla, Siobhan McKenna Rd, and Circular Road,”

“I really love what you do. I look forward to your next book.”

“We had a number of half-chances and we put ourselves in a position to do things, but the forwards were very disappointing,”

“With the injuries that we have in the back three at the moment it was important that we brought in a player of quality and experience and Salesi Finau fits that bill exactly,”

“He has performed consistently well for Llanelli over the past seven seasons and he is looking forward to getting out there on Saturday.”

“We were disappointed with our performance against Bristol in terms of the handling errors and poor execution,”

“And there is no doubt our forward effort was not what we would have liked it to have been, and they know they have to be much better on Saturday.”

“He was pretty shaken up about this whole entire thing,”

“Their numbers 9, 10 and 15 demonstrated how to play in the conditions.”

“With the injuries that we have in the back three at the moment it was important that we brought in a player of quality and experience and Salesi Finau fits that bill exactly. He has performed consistently well for Llanelli over the past seven seasons and he is looking forward to getting out there on Saturday.”

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who dont read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.

What do you believe in?’ asked David.‘I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?

When did you get so clever?When I realized I wasnt as clever as I thought.

Theres a difference between living and just surviving. Do something you love, and find someone to love who loves that you love what you do.It is really that simple.And that hard.

I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god is as empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their good fortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, they say only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to his will. What kind of god is that?

Before she came ill, Davids mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They werent alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. (...) Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by torch light beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. (...) 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, Davids mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. They were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves. They were so old, and so strange, that they had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied. The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, but sometimes the walls separating the two became so thing and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other. That was when the trouble started. That was when the bad things came. That was when the Crooked Man began to appear to David.

He became merely the broken statue of a beast, now without anothers fear to animate it.

I dream dark dreams. I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches and moon-cast shadows. I dream of dancers floating in the air, stepping lightly even in death, and my own pain is but a faint echo of their suffering as I run. My blood is black on the snow, and the edges of the world are silvered with moonlight. I run into the darkness, and he is waiting. I dream in black and white, and I dream of him. I dream of Caleb, who does not exist, and I am afraid.

The biggest life change any man would ever experience was the ending of it.