And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

Grief, I swear to God, doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the senses. And sometimes, all I want to do is cut off my nose so I can't smell her, hack my fingers off at the joint.

He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.