If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and...

The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila’s Front Porch, Tawny’s High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah’s House of Holies.”Nice,”...

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren’t enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than any cause, though it’s the cause that is usually most vilified.

The rich kept you waiting so you could feel free to admire all that they had.

What is important is not what you hear said, it’s what you observe.

He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came...

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.”(“The Castle”)

I’m relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures?

There is no client as scary as an innocent man.”J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.

Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?

Bosch knew the dawn had nothing on the dusk. Dawn always came up ugly, as if the sun was clumsy and in a hurry. The dusk was smoother, the moon more graceful. Maybe it was...

You know what my father said about innocent clients? … He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it’ll...

You don’t like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers’ bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets...

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million...

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.

The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color...

Well, did he do it?”She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn’t matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant “did it” or not. What mattered was the evidence against him...

There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys — prosecution and defense — dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open...

That’s justice,” she said, nodding at the statue. “She doesn’t hear you. She doesn’t see you. She can’t feel you and won’t speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde.

Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.