Jeff Lindsay Quotes

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

It was clear to me that it wouldn't matter what I did - they would never truly appreciate me or learn what I had to offer. They were far beyond fickle - they were insensible, like kittens,predatory little things, distracted by the first bit of string or shiny bauble that rolled across the floor, and nothing I could ever say or do could possibly make any kind of dent in their willful ignorance.

I rose to my knees, mouth dry and heart pounding, and paused to finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip through the hole and wiggled it at myself. Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I don't know, but I'm almost there. I hear my friends calling.

Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth - it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.

I am not shy about admitting my modest talents. For example, I am happy to admit that I am better than average at clever remarks, and I also have a flair for getting people to like me. But to be perfectly fair to myself, I am ever-ready to confess my shortcomings, too, and a quick round of soul-searching forced me to admit that I had never been any good at all at breathing water. As I hung there from the seat belt, dazed and watching the water pour in and swirl around my head, this began to seem like a very large character flaw.

In its own way the kiss had been an act of murder.

Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of our neighbor's children?

I stood up. It was all too much. I could not even meet my own expectations, and to be asked to deal with all theirs too was suffocating.

When faced with people who have very limited conversational skills and no apparent desire to cultivate any it's always easier to simply go along.

Me, feeling. What a concept.

And here I always thought morality was useless.

Life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point.

It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens...The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too.

Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story.

...she opened the door very slowly and carefully, half hiding behind it, as if badly frightened of what might be waiting for her on the other side. And considering that it was me waiting, this showed rare common sense.

A man can take only so much. Even a phony man like me.

First things first has always been my motto, mostly because it makes absolutely no sense - after all, if first things were second or third, they wouldn't be first things, would they? Still, cliches exist to comfort the feeble minded, not to provide any actual meaning.

It’s like, everything really is two ways, the way we all pretend it is and the way it really is

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.

Was insanity really easier to accept than unconsciousness?

Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really," I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers. -Dexter

you can’t use logic on human behavior.

For the first time I could remember, I felt weak, woozy and stupid— like a human-being. Like a very small and helpless human-being.

Whatever made me the way I am left me hollow, empty inside, unable to feel. It doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm quite sure most people fake an awful lot of everyday human contact. I just fake it all. I fake it very well, and the feelings are never there.

And I was having too much fun to stop now.

Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD.

We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait... No matter what... pressure... you might feel.

It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.

The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.

I often find myself in situations where it seems to me like everyone else has read the instruction book

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?

I did not like this feeling of having feelings.

After a long moment I closed the freezer door. I wanted to lie down and press my cheek against the cool linoleum. Instead I reached out with my little finger and flipped the Barbie's head. It went thack thack against the door. I flipped it again. Thack thack. Whee. I had a new hobby.

A reasonable being might think that he and I could find some common ground; have a cup of coffee and compare our Passengers, exchange trade talk and chitchat about dismemberment techniques. But no: Doakes wanted me dead. And I found it difficult to share his point of view.

You're driving me NORMAL!

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?

And so as much as I can, I care about her, dear Deborah. It's probably not love, but I would rather she were happy.

This was just no fun. I wanted my brain back.

...my conscience has the same hard reality as a unicorn.

What do you want a clock for?” “To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.

That's why I liked him, I think. Another guy pretending to be human, just like me.

I'm quite sure more people fake an awful lot of everyday human contact. I just fake all of it." --Dexter

But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.

Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner.

I had killed our careful relationship by driving my tongue through its heart and pushing it off a cliff.

I looked around the store and what I saw was not very encouraging. There were rows and rows of violent toys...aisle after aisle of training devices for recreational slaughter. No wonder our world was such a mean and violent place...if we teach children that killing is fun, can we really be surprised if now and then someone is smart enough to learn?