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“I'm a ghost," said the small figure, then added, a little uncertainly, "Boo?”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“You can't prove that something doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“He had never really speculated about this before, since demons came in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, some of them came in more than one shape or size all by themselves, such as O'Dear, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Overweight, and his twin, O'Really, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Slim When They're Not.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“â€�"Sarge, mr. Nurd here is threatening to turn me to jelly."
"really?" said Sarge. "what flavor?”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“a technician who uses the term “glitchâ€� is like a
Doctor who tells you you’re suffering from a “thingy,â€� except the doctor won’t tell you to go home and try turning yourself on and off again.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“I don't think," he said, "that a vicar is supposed to beat a bishop to death, or even back to death."
Mr. Berkeley looked down upon the remains of Bishop Bernard.
"If anyone asks, we'll say he fell over," he said. "Lots of times.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“...it was imaginative people who tended to lie. Lying required making stuff up, and only imaginative people were good at that.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“It is a curious fact that small boys are more terrified of their babysitters than small girls are. In part, this is because small girls and babysitters, who are usually slightly larger girls, belong to the same species, and therefore understand each other. Small boys, on the other hand, do not understand girls, and therefore being looked after by one is a little like a hamster being looked after by a shark. If you are a small boy, it may be some consolation to you to know that even large boys do not understand girls, and girls, by and large, do not understand boys. This makes adult life very interesting.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“And Nurd, who had never had a mother and father, and who had never loved or been loved, marvelled at the ways in which feeling so wonderful could also leave one open to so much pain. In a strange way, he envied Samuel even that. He wanted to care about someone so much that it could hurt.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Samuel didn't move. 'What will you do if I climb off the bed?'

'Well I can eat you, or I can drag you down to the depths of Hell, never to seen or heard from again. Depends, really.'

'On what?'

'Lost of things: hygiene, for a start. After tasting that sock, I don't fancy eating any part of you, to be honest, so it'll have to be the depths of Hell for you, I'm afraid.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“If you listen hard enough, there’s almost no such thing as silence: there’s just noise that isn’t very loud yet.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Astronomers who were recently sifting through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a big dust cloud at the center of our galaxy, found a substance there called ethyl formate, which is the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries, and the smell of rum, the drink popular with pirates. Therefore, our galaxy tastes a bit of raspberries and smells of rum, which is nice.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“In general it's a good idea to avoid people who take themselves too seriously. As individuals, we have only so much seriousness to go round, and people who take themselves very seriously don't have enough seriousness left over to take other people seriously. Instead they tend to look down on them, and are secretly pleased when they get stuff wrong, because they just prove to the too-serious types that they were right not to take them too seriously to begin with.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“In later life, people will be impressed that you can quote Shakespeare, and you will sound very intelligent. It's harder to quote trigonometry, or quadratic equations, and not half as romantic.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“And then she did something completely unexpected. Having spent the last five minutes complaining about him, and not believing anything that he told her, she came over and hugged him, and kissed his hair.”
― John Connelly, The Gates

“It may well be the case that one cannot prove the existence of a nine-eyed, multitentacled pink monster named Herbert, but that does not mean that, somewhere in the universe, there is not a nine-eyed multitentacled pink monster named Herbert wondering why nobody writes to him. Just because he hasn't been seen doesn't mean that he isn't out there. This is known as an inductive argument. But the argument is probable, not definite. If there's actually a pretty good chance he exists, there's at least as good a chance that he doesn't exist. So you can prove a negative, at least as much as you can prove anything at all.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“...and because atoms are so small, and are constantly being recycled, every breath you take contains atoms that were once breathed by Julius Caesar and Elvis Presley. So a little bit of you formerly ruled Rome, and sang, "Blue Suede Shoes".”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Most people are not bad. Oh, they do bad things sometimes, and we all have a little badness in us, but very few people are unspeakably evil, and most of the bad things they do seem perfectly reasonable to them at the time. Perhaps they’re bored, or selfish, or greedy, but, for the most part, they don’t actually want to hurt anyone when they do bad things. They just want to make their own lives a little easier.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“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.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Mrs. Abernathy frightened him, the way strong women will often frighten weak men.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Funny, that. For so long Wormwood had desired the throne and then, when he'd had it, it hadn't been worth desiring after all.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“As the house came apart, more tendrils of blue light appeared, shooting through the gaps and disappearing into the ground.”
― John Connolly, The Gates: A Novel

“And why do you imagine that we would want beauty? Beauty mocks us, for we have none. Goodness appalls us, because we have no goodness. We are all that this world is not, and we are all that you are not.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Mr. Renfield didn’t like the Abernathys, exactly, but a funny thing about adults is that they will spend time with people they don’t like very much if they think it might benefit them.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“After all, not doing bad things is not the same as doing good things, but that is why you and I will never become saints.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Scientists call it the singularity. People who are religious might call it the mote in God's eye. Some scientists will tell you that can't believe in the singularity and the idea of a God or gods. Some religious people will try to tell you the same thing. Still, you can believe in the singularity and a God if you like. It's entirely up to you. One requires evidence; the other faith. They're not the same thing, but as long as you don't get the two mixed up, then everything should be fine.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“And his voice was filled with regret, and fondness and hope.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“A funny thing about adults is they will spend time with people they don’t like very much if they think it might benefit them.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“...heard the sound of emptiness, which, as anyone knows, is not the same thing as no sound, since it includes all the noise that someone was expecting to hear, but doesn't.”
― John Connolly, The Gates

“Incidentally, when you put inverted commas around a word in this way, as I just did around the word 'sick,' it means that you don't really believe that the word in question is true. In this case, I know that you weren't really sick that day; you just felt like having a morning off to watch children's television in your pajamas. Hence 'sick,' instead of, well, sick. If you really want to annoy someone, you can make little inverted commas by holding up two fingers of each hand and twitching them gently, as though you're tickling an invisible elf under the armpits. For example, when your mother calls you for dinner, and dinner turns out to be boiled fish and broccoli, you can say to her, 'Well, I'll just eat my 'dinner,' then,' and do the little fingers sign. She'll love it. Seriously, I can hear her laughing already.”
― John Connolly, The Gates