The key to a happy life is to have accomplishments to be proud of and purpose to look forward to, and at the moment I had both. How wonderful it was to be me.

And once again I found myself wondering, as I drifted off to stunned and unbelieving sleep:How do these terrible things always happen to me?

...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.

The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential.

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.

I don't do my job to catch the bad guys. Why would I want to do that? No, I do my job to make order out of chaos.

For my part, my interest in Paris had faded away completely long ago when I learned that it was in France.