Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?" "A thirty-eight." "I like a nine-millimeter myself." "A nine's good." "Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said. One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.

It was dark and raining, with bad visibility, but this was Jersey, and we don't slow down for anything.

Maybe your pregnant. Oops, hold on, you're not pregnant, on account of you're not gettin any.

We don't usually write up accidents involving rabbits. - Joe Morelli

I see you looking at my cookies,' my father said to Morelli. 'Don't even think about it. Go get your own cookies.

We were discussing a grisly double murder and Rodriguez was telling us all this in the same sort of conversational tone a person might use to pass on a favorite lasagna recipe. And I was responding with the same enthusiasm a new cook might show. I was simultaneously horrified and impressed with myself.

Morelli smiled. "It could have been Jenny Ragucci. That makes much more sense. I had good luck with sluts." I looked over at him. All in the past," Morelli said. "I'm a cupcake man now." Whoa, dude," Mooner said. "That's so, like, cosmic.