The Black Ice Quotes

“He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in.
There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society’s institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“You don’t like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Through studying the past we learn our future.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“one of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a matching band in a world somewhere else.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“... he always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“It’s all a cesspool, man. Doesn’t matter if you’re on the bottom or the top. You’re still swimming in shit.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Are you like him?” she asked. “Who?” “Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.” “Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“There were elegantly made up women sitting on bus benches who were not really women and not really waiting for buses.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“New Year’s Eve was a night for jazz, and the saxophone could cut you in half if you were alone.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“You can’t know people that well, man. Everybody’s got a private room.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“el funeral de un policía era el mejor día para saltarse un semáforo, exceder el límite de velocidad o hacer una maniobra ilegal, ya que no quedaba ni un solo guardia de tráfico en toda la ciudad.”
― Michael Connelly, El hielo negro

“overexaggerate”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Faustian”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“In the Catalina crowd he stood out like a garbage man at a wedding.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“You could be riding in the back of a studio’s black limo, or just as easily the back of the coroner’s blue van. The sound of applause was the same as the buzz of a bullet spinning past your ear in the dark. That randomness. That was L.A. There was flash fire and flash flood, earthquake, mudslide. There was the drive-by shooter and the crack-stoked burglar. The drunk driver and the always curving road ahead. There were killer cops and cop killers. There was the husband of the woman you were sleeping with. And there was the woman. At any moment on any night there were people being raped, violated, maimed. Murdered and loved. There was always a baby at his mother’s breast. And, sometimes, a baby alone in a Dumpster.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Fear, though always unspoken, nevertheless stripped men of their carefully orchestrated poses. The adrenaline roars and the throat gurgles with fear like a backed-up drain. Sheer desire for survival takes over. It sharpens the mind, pares away all the bullshit.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“But Bosch knew nothing premiered in this part of town except thirteen-year-old hookers.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“What Bosch had were just parts of the whole. What he needed was the glue that would correctly hold them together. When he had first received his gold shield he had a partner on the robbery table in Van Nuys who told him that facts weren’t the most important part of an investigation, the glue was. He said the glue was made of instinct, imagination, sometimes guesswork and most times just plain luck.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“«No hay trampa más mortífera que la que uno se tiende a sí mismo.»”
― Michael Connelly, El hielo negro

“It was a place to drink alone. A place for executive suicides who needed courage, broken cops who couldn’t cope with the loneliness they built into their lives, writers who could no longer write and priests who could no longer forgive even their own sins.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“giving a smiling come-hither look. The name at the bottom of the photo was”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“It was a place to drink alone. A place for executive suicides who needed courage, broken cops who couldn’t cope with the loneliness they built into their lives, writers who could no longer write and priests who could no longer forgive even their own sins. It was a place to drink mean, as long as you still had the green.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“messenger boy here. He wasn’t supposed to find out”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“Uno de los casos que Harry aún no había logrado resolver era el de una persona cuyo cadáver había aparecido en seis pedazos: uno en cada descanso de la escalera de incendios de un hotel de Gower Street. Aquel crimen atroz no había escandalizado a nadie en la oficina. Incluso corría el chiste de que por suerte la víctima no se había alojado en el Holiday Inn, que tenía quince plantas.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance. “Are you like him?” she asked. “Who?” “Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.” “Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.” “Yes,”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice

“All his life he believed he was slumming toward something good. That there was meaning. In the youth shelter, the foster homes, the Army and Vietnam, and now the department, he always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty.”
― Michael Connelly, The Black Ice