Top 200 Michael Connelly Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Bosch always thought that if you started with the assumption that murder is an unreasonable action, then how could there ever be a fully reasonable explanation for it? It was that understanding that kept him from watching and being able to enjoy films and television shows about detectives. He found them unrealistic in their delivery of what the general audience wanted: all of the answers.”

— Michael Connelly

102. “In this country, there are two million people in prison. Two million. If the system gets it wrong one percent of the time, that is twenty thousand innocent people in jail. Lower it to half a percent and you’re still at ten thousand people. This is what keeps me up at night. Why I always say, the scariest client is the innocent man. Because there is so much at stake.”

— Michael Connelly

103. “There were elegantly made up women sitting on bus benches who were not really women and not really waiting for buses.”

— Michael Connelly

104. “I view people two ways. They’re either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.”

— Michael Connelly

105. “I’m going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I’m handing a book to – or I’m not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you’re out. You have no control over it.”

— Michael Connelly

106. “Guilt,” he said. “You have to get by it. Let the ghosts go or they’ll take you under and you’ll never be the lawyer you are supposed to be. You will never see the big picture.”

— Michael Connelly

107. “I feel I’m functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I’m trying to get the world accurate.”

— Michael Connelly

108. “I fully acknowledge that it is easier to knock something down than to build it in the first place. But.”

— Michael Connelly

109. “I don’t think anyone will believe me, but I’ve never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.”

— Michael Connelly

110. “When people think they have discovered or earned a certain knowledge on their own, they are more apt to hold on to it.”

— Michael Connelly

111. “In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.”

— Michael Connelly

112. “But before I left,” Rider continued, “I learned enough to know that most often sexual abuse of children comes from inside the family, relatives or close friends. The boogey monsters who climb through the window and abduct are few and far between.”

— Michael Connelly

113. “But when Bosch opened the files as part of his cold-case review, he took a different approach. He had always operated according to the axiom that everybody counts in this world or nobody counts. This belief dictated that he must give each case and each victim his best effort.”

— Michael Connelly

114. “For Bosch such cynical thoughts came easily. He had been around the block a few times.”

— Michael Connelly

115. “Action and adventure on land and sea-you can’t ask for more. But Robert Kurson raises the ante in Pirate Hunters with an array of mystery and a fleet of colorful characters spanning four centuries. This is a great summer read!”

— Michael Connelly

116. “More inmates died of suicide than the needle on death row in California.”

— Michael Connelly

117. “Ingeniously plotted and executed, Print the Legend is an epic masterpiece from Craig McDonald. Beginning to end, I was riveted by this story of character, history and intrigue.”

— Michael Connelly

118. “Out of the blue and into the black is what they called going into a tunnel. Each one was a black echo. Nothing but death in there. But, still, they went.”

— Michael Connelly

119. “I’m not ‘Mr. No-By-The-Book.’ I just want to make sure the character is by the book.”

— Michael Connelly

120. “A man who looks guilty is found guilty.”

— Michael Connelly

121. “You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong. I’m strong, Harry. Now, tell me why you came to vist me today.”

— Michael Connelly

122. “The next ten minutes took ten hours.”

— Michael Connelly

123. “I don’t remember what it stood for,” Ballard said. “I was on patrol in Pacific Division and I remember filling out the forms on the MDC. Geographic something or other.” “Geographic Reporting and Safety Program,” Bosch said. “The guys down in the ASS Office really worked some OT on it.” “Ass Office?” “The Acronym Selection Section. You never heard of it? They got about ten guys down there full-time.”

— Michael Connelly

124. “You know what they call a guy who switches sides in homicide? They call him a Jane Fonda, as in hanging with the North Vietnamese. You get it? It’s crossing to the dark side.”

— Michael Connelly

125. “I’ve been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don’t think I would’ve had that kind of drive if I hadn’t come out of the journalism business.”

— Michael Connelly

126. “The digital world was always billed as a great advancement but he remained skeptical.”

— Michael Connelly

127. “To write more from memory and to be more creative – I think – because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can’t walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.”

— Michael Connelly

128. “If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?”

— Michael Connelly

129. “She had said she was strong but he knew that comfort and strength could come from sadness. That was what she had.”

— Michael Connelly

130. “She’s interested in Japanese history right now, so that’s what I’m reading to her. And there’s this saying they have about conformist society: The nail that sticks out gets pounded down.”

— Michael Connelly

131. “I was enamored of detectives as a teenager. I liked what they did – piecing things together, thinking about situations. But to get there? Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn’t have that in me. I didn’t want to tell people what to do.”

— Michael Connelly

132. “If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you.”

— Michael Connelly

133. “When you find the one that you think fits, then grab on for dear life.”

— Michael Connelly

134. “I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.”

— Michael Connelly

135. “We want the truth, Detective. You are confusing that with what we choose to tell the public.”

— Michael Connelly

136. “Take every case personally and you get angry. It builds a fire. It gives you the edge you need to go the distance every time out.”

— Michael Connelly

137. “The character can never be static from book to book. People might think you just come up with a new plot and stick this guy in. Well, he has to be as new as the plot every time.”

— Michael Connelly

138. “I felt sympathy for her but not too much. Idealism dies hard with everybody.”

— Michael Connelly

139. “No Way Back is my kind of novel – a tough, taut thriller – Mofina knows the world he writes about.”

— Michael Connelly

140. “The doctor told her that more than thirty cops had showed up the night of her surgery to donate blood for her. He gave her a list of names. Many were from the late.”

— Michael Connelly

141. “Don’t go growing a conscience on me,” I said. “I’ve been down that road. It doesn’t lead you to anything good.”

— Michael Connelly

142. “We’re all seeking order. We’re all seeking control.”

— Michael Connelly

143. “The pages were yellowed and had gone to brown at the edges. They were brittle, much like the memories the photos evoked.”

— Michael Connelly

144. “It is an amazing thing to be able to hold everything that is important to you in one arm.”

— Michael Connelly

145. “When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don’t like to reread them.”

— Michael Connelly

146. “Livingstone had said sympathy was no substitute for action. That was an essential brick in Bosch’s wall. He had built himself as a man of action and, at the moment when the integrity of his life’s work had been called into question by a man on death row, he had chosen to turn his sympathy for Elizabeth Clayton into action.”

— Michael Connelly

147. “How I work is that I write a story I’d like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.”

— Michael Connelly

148. “Bremmer stared uneasily and Bosch dismissed him with his hand. The reporter closed the door and went to his own car.”

— Michael Connelly

149. “Maybe it has something to do with being a reporter for a long time that I don’t look to newspapers and television and so forth for inspiration most of the time.”

— Michael Connelly

150. “Darkness waits. All things come to the dark.”

— Michael Connelly