Quotes by John Connolly

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

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.

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

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

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.

Story! The dwarf snorted. Youll be talking about happily ever after next. Do we look happy? Theres no happily ever after for us. Miserabily ever after, more like.

Perhaps its 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.

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

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

The law doesnt require truth, only the appearance of it. Most cases simply rest on a version of it thats acceptable to both sides. You want to know the only truth is? Everybody lies.--Elwin Stark

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

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

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...

Slow animals always become prey in the end.

A demon obsessed with being human is a demon no longer

Why did you shoot him?You werent around, I replied, my teeth gritted in pain. If youd been here Id have shot you instead.

They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels werent entirely sure that this was a good thing.

Whats seldom is wonderful.

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.

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