Included below is a collection of quotes made by Dr. Laszlo Kreizler from the Alienist books. For basic information about Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a character analysis of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, or character testimonials about Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, please use the menu.
Dr. Laszlo Kreizler Quotes
On Music
The Alienist, 28:
Kreizler indicated his newspaper as he checked the time. “I’m somewhat irritated with your employers. Yesterday evening I saw a brilliant Pagliacci at the Metropolitan, with Melba and Ancona – and all the Times can talk about is Alvary’s Tristan.”
On Sanity and Society
The Alienist, 33:
“They’ll want him to be mad, of course,” Laszlo mused, not hearing me. “The doctors here, the newspapers, the judges; they’d like to think that only a madman would shoot a five-year-old girl in the head. It creates certain… difficulties, if we are forced to accept that our society can produce sane men who commit such acts.”
Interacting With Children
The Alienist, 69:
The girl pointed at the book uncertainly, then spoke in a tremor as she turned her finger on me: “Then… am I mad, too, Dr. Kreizler? And is this man going to put me in one of these places?”
“What?” Kreizler answered, taking the book away and giving me an admonishing look. “Mad? Rediculous! We have only good news.” Laszlo spoke to her as to any adult – directly, bluntly – but with a tone that he reserved for children: patient, kind, occasionally indulgent. “Come right over here.” The girl approached him, and Kreizler helped her jump onto his knee. “You are a very healthy, very intelligent young lady.” The girl blushed and laughed, quietly and happily.
On Manners
The Alienist, 95:
“Am I clear, sir?”
“Clear, sir?” Kreizler finally answered, still not looking at Strong. “Certainly you are ill mannered, but as to clear…” He shrugged.
Feeling Out Of The Loop
The Alienist, 106:
“Moore,” Kreizler interrupted, his voice snapping a bit, “I’m beginning to understand how you must often feel – once again, gentlemen and lady, I’m lost.”
On Germans
The Alienist, 209:
“Although you can never be quite sure about the Germans…” Marcus caught himself and glanced at Kreizler. “Oh. No offence intended, Doctor,” he said.
Lucius clapped a hand to his forehead, but Kreizler only smiled wryly. The Isaacsons’ idiosyncracies no longer perplexed him in any way. “No offence taken, Detective Sergeant – you can, indeed, never be certain about the Germans.”
Losing His Temper
The Alienist, 222-3:
“You seem to think,” Laszlo replied, a bit snappishly, “that I suffer from blinkered vision. I remind you that I do have some experience with these things.”
Sara studied him for a moment, and then quietly asked, “Why do you resist so strongly the notion of a woman’s active involvement in the formation?”
Laszlo suddenly rose, slammed a hand down on his desk, and shouted, “Because her role cannot have been active, damn it!”
Marcus, Lucius, and I froze for a moment, then exchanged uneasy glances. The rather shocking outburst, quite apart from being unwarranted, didn’t even seem to make sense, given Laszlo’s professional opinions. And yet it went on: “Had a woman been actively involved in this man’s life, at any point, we would not even be here – the crimes would never have happened!” Kreizler tried to regain an even keel, but only half-succeeded. “The whole notion is absurd, there is nothing in the literature to suggest it! And so I really must insist, Sara – we shall presume a record of feminine passivity in the formation and proceed to the issue of the mutilations! Tomorrow!“
With An Angry Parent
The Alienist, 278:
“I demand to know what part you have in this matter, Herr Doctor! Did you snatch the Lohmann boy from his parents, just as you snatched my daughter from me?”
“I’ve told you once,” Laszlo said, his teeth starting to grind. “I know nothing about any Lohmann boy. And as for your daughter, Herr Höpner, she asked to be removed from your home, because you could not refrain from beating her with a stick – a stick not unlike the one you now hold.”
The crowd drew breath as one, and Höpner’s eyes went wide. “What a man does in his own home with his own family is his own business!” he protested.
“Your daughter felt differently about that,” Kreizler said. “Now, for the last time – raus mit der!“
John Gets It Wrong
The Alienist, 359:
Kreizler stared at me for a few more seconds, then leaned back, opened his mouth, and let out a deeper laugh than any I’d ever heard from him; deep, and irritatingly long.
“Kreizler,” I said contritely, after a full minute of this treatment. “Please, I hope you’ll -” He didn’t stop, however, at which annoyance began to come through my voice. “Kreizler. Kreizler! All right, I’ve made a jackass our of myself. Now will you have the decency to shut up?”
But he didn’t. After another half-minute the laugh finally did begin to calm, but only because it was now causing some pain in his right arm. Holding that wounded limb, Laszlo continued to chuckle, tears appearing in his eyes. “I am sorry, Moore,” he finally said. “But what you must have been thinking -” And then another round of painful laughter.
His Father
The Alienist, 371:
“No. Do you know what my – father always said to me, when I was – a boy?”
“No. What?”
“That –” The voice was still scraping terribly, as if it were a labor to produce it, but the words began to come faster: “That I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. That I thought I knew how people should behave, that I thought I was a better person than he was. But one day — one day, he said, I would know that I wasn’t. Until then, I’d be nothing more than an — imposter…”
Distraught
The Alienist, 372:
“We’ve been hunting a killer, John, but the killer isn’t the real danger – I am!” He hissed suddenly and clenched his teeth. “Well, I’ve seen enough. If I’m the danger then I shall remove myself. Let this man keep killing. It’s what they want. He’s part of their order, their precious social order – without such creatures they’ve no scapegoats for their own wretched brutality! Who am I to interfere?”
“Kreizler,” I said, ever more worried, for there was no question now that he meant what he was saying. “Listen to yourself, you’re going against everything -“
“No!” he answered. “I’m going along! I’ll go back to my Institute and my dead, empty house, and forget this case. I’ll see to it that Stevie and Cyrus heal and never again face unknown attackers because of my vain schemes. And this bloody society that they’ve built for themselves can go down the path they have planned for it, and rot!”
Dealing With A Judge
The Angel of Darkness, 59-60:
“And precisely what,” the voice demanded, “are your honor’s qualifications for coming to so precise a psychological conclusion concerning this boy?”
[…] The judge, for his part, put his forehead into his hand wearily for a moment, like the good Lord had just sent a rain of toads down on his little patch of earth in particular. “Dr Kreizler -” he started.But the Doctor already had an accusing finger up. “Has an assessment been done? Has one of my esteemed colleagues given you any reason for using such language? Or have you, like most other magistrates in this city, simply decided that you are qualified to speak expertly on such matters?”
“Dr Kreizler -” the judge tried again.
But with no better luck: “Do you even have the slightest idea of what the symptoms of what you call ‘congenital destructiveness’ are? Do you even know if such a pathology exists? This insufferable, unqualified, inflammatory rhetoric -“
“Dr Kreizler!” the judge bellowed, slamming a fist down. “This is my courtroom! You have nothing to do with this case, and I demand -“
“No, sir!” the Doctor shot back. “I demand! You have made me a part of this case – myself and any other self-respecting psychologist who is within earshot of your irresponsible declarations! This boy – […] You have said that this boy is a ‘congenitally destructive menace’. I demand that you prove that assertion! I demand that he be given a new hearing, conditional upon the findings of at least one qualified alienist or psychologist!”
Saying Goodbye To Children At The Institute
The Angel of Darkness, 67:
At that point, the Doctor stopped talking and just shook his head in resignation, rubbing his black eyes and suddenly becoming conscious of the kids what were all around and over him. He smiled and tried to perk up as he first pried the one little girl off his leg and then got the two boys to calm down, speaking to them like he did to all us kids, with affection but directly, as if there were no wall of age between them. When he looked up and caught sight of me at the curb, I could see that he was trying to hold himself together long enough to make it to the calash – but the second little girl proceeded to make that job a lot tougher. From behind her back she brought a bunch of roses, wrapped in the plain paper of a local flower shop but still showing the full glory of the full summer in their white and pink petals. The Doctor smiled and kneeled down to take them from her, though when she threw her arms around his neck, that former fallen angel what the Doctor’d given a second lease on childhood, his smile disappeared and it was all he could do to keep his composure. He stood up quickly, told the boys one more time to behave themselves, then shook hands with Reverend Bancroft and near ran down the steps.
Playful
The Angel of Darkness, 268:
I didn’t know how agitated my movements had become ’til the Doctor threw a playful arm round my head, telling me it was the only way he could think of to keep my skull from exploding.
On His Arm
The Angel of Darkness, 338:
“It’s strange,” he whispered, “I never thought it might actually serve some purpose…”
“Hunh?” was all I could say.
“My arm,” the Doctor whispered back. “I’ve been so used to seeing it as a source of pain and a reminder of the past that I never imagined it could be anything else.”
[…]“I was referring to Clara Hatch,” he said, taking his eyes off the arm and glancing up and down the street. “From our first meeting, I naturally felt some empathy with her having lost the use of her right arm, quite probably because of an attack by her own mother. […] Today I used the coincidence of our injuries in my effort to make her feel safe enough in my presence to start to allow images of what happened to start to re-enter her thoughts.”
On Disturbing The Dead
The Angel of Darkness, 344-5:
“Do you think Matthew Hatch will reach out from the grave, Moore?” the Doctor needled. “To rebuke you for disturbing his eternal rest?”
“Maybe,” Mr Moore answered. “Something like that. You don’t seem too damned troubled along those lines, Kreizler, I must say.”
“Perhaps I have a different understanding of what we’ve just done,” the Doctor answered, his voice growing more serious. “Perhaps I believe that Matthew Hatch’s soul has not yet known peace, eternal or otherwise – and that we represent his only chance of attaining it.”