Dennis Lehane Quotes

Isn't it strange that its easier to be gentle with the feelings of people we care less about than those of our children, whom we love so much?

You know, sometimes I feel well and vital in the world, and sometimes I just feel so distressed I want to pull my hair out by the roots.

Of course there are times when I think, 'I'd be better out of this.'

When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only here's the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you're near.

If it weren't the problem of politics for me, it would be another. And yet, sometimes it's so difficult. And I feel sorry for myself. And then hate myself for this feeling of self-pity.

Not only is our love for our children sometimes tinged with annoyance, discouragement, and disappointment, the same is true for the love our children feel for us.

The frustrations and joys of parenthood are just hard to understand until you have a kid... the constant fight you're having with yourself, like loving being with your kid but also being kind of bored and wanting to look at your iPhone - it's kind of an interesting thing that's hard to write about before you've experienced it.

I am not a calm, happy person. I am complicated.

You know the troubles I've had with my two older children. I can't understand why it turned out so badly. I tried to give them everything. I loved them and tried to keep them near me, even when they didn't return my love. Well, I couldn't make them love me, but they could have shown some respect. I couldn't insist on love, but I could insist on respect.

I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry.

The confusing lesson whipped Frankie's anger into something she had never felt before. It was like an emotional meringue - the airy feeling of loneliness topped with the hard crisp of injustice. Yet its taste was far from sweet.

Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to accept certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.

Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.

If you've never wept and want to, have a child.

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for another human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.

He said he loved me,” she whispered. Daniel swallowed, and he had the strangest sensation, almost a premonition of what it must like to be a parent. Someday, God willing, he’d have a daughter, and that daughter would look like the woman standing in front of him, and if ever she looked at him with that bewildered expression, whispering, “He said he loved me . . .” Nothing short of murder would be an acceptable response.

I was an onion, layers and layers and layers under a thin, papery skin. If anyone had been able to cut me open, my bitter, irritating juices would have stung their eyes, and they would have cried. Although I couldn't cry myself, much at the time. But no one would cut me open.

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

One Dad I know uses what I call Post-It® Note therapy on his children. He leaves sticky Post-It Notes everywhere ...in their lunch box, inside their shoes, on top of their sandwich before he wraps it up. He once went into his daughter's room, looking for his hammer, and on the back of her bedroom door were every Post-It Note he'd ever given her - over 250 in all with simple messages like 'Great job'...'I love you'...or 'You're special to me.' Do you think that girl knew, without a doubt, that her Dad valued her and loved her?

An increase of tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning to indignation. He was at the point where we seek to adopt a course, and to accept what tears us apart.

Almost all stress, tension, anxiety, and frustration, both in life and in work, comes from doing one thing while you believe and value something completely different.

Take love when love is given, But never think to find it A sure escape from sorrow Or a complete repose.

Resentment slowly poisoned my blood and I laughed at myself and my absurd hopes.

Painful is the stress when one cannot reproduce or convey vividly to others, however hard he tries, what he's experienced so intensely.