Ken Bruen Quotes

I'd kill to be a poet.

I've always been a reader; no matter what else I've lost, I hung on to that.

Books. I needed to ground myself and nothing, not even the Jay, quite does it like books. I don't always have the focus to read them but I sure do need them around

It's said the difference between one friend and none is infinity.

I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange." (Dale Cooper, in Twin Peaks)

You ever read Anton LaVey?

Sometimes there's just no justice. The bad guys do live, if not happily ever after, then certainly conspicuously.

My father believed a real man didn't read, and my parents hoped I'd get some sense and find a job in insurance.

It's always the same. When you come out of it and take a look around, the sight of wounds that you have left on the people who care for you makes you wince more than those you have inflicted on yourself. Though I am devoid of regret or remorse for almost anything I have done, if there is a corner for these feelings then it lies with that awareness. It should be enough to stop you from ever going back down there, but it seldom is. Anthony Loyd, My War Gone By, I Miss It So.

The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned ... THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.

The writing is a joy, so seamless you nearly miss the sheer artistry of the style and the terrific, wry humour.

The only book in our home was the Bible. My parents forbade books. They thought I needed help because I wanted to be a writer!

-it's life... In all its granite hardness.

He missed two people: a) the girl she was; b) the person she'd made him feel he might have been. A deep sigh escaped him.

He was in his mid-thirties, with a posture that suggested a hundred.

The national sport in Ireland, apart from talking, is hurling.

Because I've been so bad at looking after myself, how would I ever look after a kid? But the old cliche applied: they handed her to me, and my world turned upside down - and I realised I was now going to be vulnerable in more ways than I expected.

We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such.

I always had this notion of a noir novel in Galway. The city is exploding, emigration has reversed, and we are fast becoming a cosmopolitan city.

A mini-cab later and he arrived in Stockwell, where the pit bulls travelled in twos. Ludlow Road is near the tube station, a short mugging away.

Roberts knocked, heard: 'Enter.' Thought: 'Wanker.

After five awful movies, I admitted failure and said I was not cut out to be an actor. But how many people get a chance to live their dream?

Laundromats ... like a waiting room for people who didn't go anywhere

Hemingway had a handy dictum. You want to know if something is morally right? Listen to your stomach. If it sits like broken glass, then it's morally wrong.

He looked old, like a stranger. He was someone else, someone whom he could easily hate. (Tom Pitts, Piggyback)

Tony Black is the Tom Waits of Crime Fiction, yes, that good.

Your life is in some bizarre state when priests are throwing abuse at you on the street.

I had me one sharp knife, a throwback to my glory days of the swans, and it's sharp as a nun on her second sherry.

By the holy, Jack Taylor. I was beginning to think you were a rumor running around as a fact.

I didn't know what to say. Said 'I don't know what to say.

My own life has had so many twists that I keep thinking I'll have one blessing that is not in disguise.

An alkie in full defiant