343 Quotes by John Connolly

They were called “rooms,” but it was still a cell. A room you could leave when you chose to do so; a cell you could not.

I’d been hurt, and in response I had acted violently, destroying a little of myself each time I did so.

People suffered all the time, and died badly. Many called on God to save them at the end, but if God heard their pleas, He chose not to answer. Maybe the pastor was wrong. Maybe God was imperfect, and men, by acting in their own interests, were reflecting only the reality of His nature.

If ‘why’ was the first and last question, then because I was curious to see what would happen was the first and last answer. A version of it had been spoken to God Himself in the Garden of Eden, and it was destined to be the reason for the end of things at the hands of man.

There were books everywhere: on the floors, on the stairs, on furniture both built for that purpose and constructed for other ends entirely. There were bookshelves in the main hallway, in the downstairs rooms, and in the upstairs rooms. There were even bookshelves in the bathroom and the kitchen.

They weren’t evil, or vicious, or cruel. They were just bored people with too much time on their hands, and such people will, in the end, get up to mischief.

Being scared isn’t the problem. It’s not running away that’s the hard part.

That is what we do for the ones we love: we lie to protect them. Not all truths are welcome.

But some gifts are worse than curses, and the dark side of the gift is that they know. The lost, the stragglers, those who should not have been taken but were, the innocents, the struggling, tormented shades, the gathering ranks of the dead, they know. And they come.