Joseph Hansen

“And you never even reported it. You should have reported it. I could have took fingerprints. I'd love to lock up them skinheads.""What I'm reporting is the gun, my Sig Sauer." Dave said. "Hetzel will have it. I want it back.""What did it cost you?" Rose said."That's not the point," Dave said. "It's the only gun I ever owned. I'm against guns. They give too many people power who have no right to it. Guns cancel out intelligence, reason, decency, civility, and put terror in their place. I got along without a gun most of my working life. But a man can't buck the odds forever. About five years back I bought the Sig Sauer. I'm used to it. And I don't know that I'm morally prepared to buy another one.”

“She was sad and lost and alone in the dark," Cecil said. "She needed somebody to hold her.""And you think she's going to get tired of that?""You did," Cecil said. "You shut me right out.""It was your decision, not mine," Dave said. "You are the dearest thing in life to me. You're bright and funny and gentle and decent and full of life. And I will never get tired of you, and neither will Chrissie. It's not up to her anyway. You're the adult. Tell her the truth -- that it was an act of kindness that got out of hand.""I can't hurt her like that," Cecil said. "It will hurt more the longer you let it go on.”

“Cecil reached for Dave, but Dave stepped back. "Dave, why are you doing this? You're not getting paid. Lovejoy called you off the case. You want the truth? You're compulsive. You can't leave it alone. You're like Adam Streeter, you know that? You live for danger." "I live for justice," Dave said."Justice is a dream," Cecil scoffed, "a romantic ideal. Who the fuck gets justice in this life?(...)”

“It happens to everyone and it happens fast.”

“It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this—that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first.”

“Windows were broken. Where not broken they were boarded up, had been for years: the rust from nailheads had written long, sad farewells down the salt-silvered planks.”

“Don't forget, and don't let your reader forget, that the small world in which you have held him for the last hour or two hasn't ended. Be aware, and make him aware, that tomorrow all of its remaining inhabitants will pick up the broken fragments of their lives, and carry on.”

“Los Angeles didn't get like this often. He hated it when it did. And this time it was holding on. It had been brutal at the cemetery three weeks ago. His father's nine widows had looked ready to drop. The savage light had leached the color from the flowers. The savage heat had got at the mound of earth from the grave even under its staring green blanket of fake grass. He'd stayed to watch the workmen fill the grave. The earth was dry. Even the sharp walls of the grave were dry. What the hell was he doing remembering that?”