Barry Lyga

“Length isn’t as important as what you say and how you say it.”

“And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we're us.”

“This is why I forgive, but I don't forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn't mean anything anymore.”

“Special kinda warm,”

“They put on fresh gloves and got back to business. Jazz wiped up the blood splatters in the freezer and tossed the tissues in with Howie’s waste. It bothered him that he was leaving evidence behind without some sort of oxygenated bleach, those blood splatters would still show up under Luminol. Of course, the odds of anyone deciding to spray down the morgue freezer and switch on an ultraviolet light were pretty minimal, so it’s not like it was evidence that anyone would ever find or use. Still: Billy Dent’s First Commandment was “Thou shalt not leave evidence.”

“Can they, like get fingerprints from her neck? Can they catch the guy that way?”“This guy isn’t an amateur. He probably used gloves.”“How do you know he isn’t an amateur, Sherlock?”“There’s bruising on the left-hand knuckles, and on the sides of both hands. Probably would be on the right-hand knuckles, too, if we had them.”“She hit him,” Howie said. “She fought back.”

“The best revenge is living well, my dad told me once.”

“I’m a complicated man, with complicated taste buds.”

“Don’t crap where you eat”

“It's a good day when a goddess gets on the school-bus with you.”

“It's like this," he'd explained once to Connie. "If someone gave you a single rose, you'd be happy, right?" "Okay," he went on, "Now imagine someone gives you ten thousand roses.""That is a whole lotta roses," she said. "That's too much.""Right. Too much. But more than that, it makes each individual rose much less special, right? It makes it hard to pick one out and say, 'That's the good one.' And it makes you want to just get rid of them all because none of them seem special now."Connie had narrowed her eyes. "Are you saying when you're at school you just want to get rid of everyone?”

“Not according to this," Jazz said, taking the report. "No evidence of sexual activity or anything like it.""Well, there's that," Howie said, sounding relieved. Jazz wondered at that - was it really so much better to be unmolested, but still murdered in a horrible fashion? To die in pain and terror, stripped, left in a field, your fingers cut off? But as long as you weren't raped, well, that was alright, then? Did it really matter at that point?”

“The world pretty much sucks most of the time. But the point of life isn’t to live in a world that doesn’t suck. The point is to try to make it suck a little bit less.”

“Look, my dad has a saying - we'll burn that bridge when get to it. OK? You get it? Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

“There was some kind of X-men emergency, so all the teachers were gone. This happens every now and then. It's one of the perks of having super heroes for your teachers - when the world is about to end (which is like at least twice a month), school gets canceled. Heck, three weeks ago there was a big chemistry final for the upperclassmen. Beast was the teacher - he's this big, burly guy who can do acrobatic stuff like a monkey, but he also happens to be a super-genius. He's, like, legendary for his tough finals, so there were kids walking through the halls, going, "Oh, God, please let Galactus try to eat the earth. Please please please let there be an alien invasion by the Skrulls!”

“Dr. Kennedy talked me out of killing myself--for now--without saying a single words or even knowing what was going on. Which, I've decided, is the mark of a totally kick-ass therapist.”

“Here's the thing. Here's the thing I hate: His concern is like a really warm drink when your body is cold, and you feel it go all the way down your throat and then into your stomach, where it pools and spreads out. But the problem is, that cold is good. Cold is numb. And when you're numb, you can't feel pain. You can't feel pain until some stupid warm drink makes you not numb anymore and then you can feel again.”

“In a way, i feel sorry for boys. They're weak. You show them boobs or a butt and they just fall apart.But I feel sorry for girls, too. Because girls get screwed, even when they're not naked with a guy. Everyone hates girls--even other girls. I mean, "girl" is like an insult, you know? "That's so girly." "Stop being a girl." "You're like a little girl."Hey, you know what? I was a little girl once and I kicked ass. I was awesome.”

“He turns to the Council. 'Sounds like Foolish behavior to me, boys. I hereby nominate the human race for membership in the Council of Fools!' He raises both arms and shouts to the sky. 'Humanity! Join us! Join your masters! All opposed, say nay!"And then nothing but silence and Flip's panting as he strains, listening.'There are no dissenting votes!' he cries. 'I hereby admit humanity to the Council of Fools!' He punches the air in triumph. 'Dude,' he says, grinning, 'I just upped our membership by six billion. Not bad, huh?”

“Kevin: 'Hey, Dad. How do you stop people from being stupid?'Dad: 'You don't.'Kevin: 'Really?'Dad: 'I've tried to explain to people when they're being stupid, but then I realized something: Most people like being stupid.'Kevin: 'I don't get it.'Dad: 'Some people just prefer it. It makes their lives easier if they let other people think for them.'Kevin: 'But that doesn't make sense. That's just stu...Oh...”

“...She's not buying [the lie], but there's nothing else on the shelves.”

“He moved to run a hand through her cornrows, then pulled back remembering the one time he's tried that-Connie had lectured him on the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not touch thy black girlfriend's hair. Ever.”

“You won't even know you've crossed the line until it's way back in your rearview mirror.”

“Jazz spent a chunk of the day fantasizing about ways to kill his grandmother, plotting them and planning them in the most excruciating, gruesome detail his imagination would allow. It turned out his imagination allowed quite a bit. He spent the rest of the day convincing himself--over and over--not to do it.”

“...called nine-one-one," Howie was saying, "and then I heard something in the alleyway, so I went back there and" --Howie coughed-- "and valiantly attacked his knife with my guts, to no avail.""Did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him?"Howie smiled wanly. "Yeah. He was about yay long" --he held up his hands, four inches apart-- "thin, made of steel. Pointy. Sharp.”

“[She] was made up of skin and bones and hate and crazy, and hate and crazy don't weigh anything.”

“Medicine cabinets are dangerous. Those doors, man. They'll just spring on you like a ninja.”

“Psychologist: "This, ah, is a new sort of, ah, psychopathology that we're only now beginning to, ah, understand. These, ah, super-serial killers have no, ah, 'type' but, ah, rather consider everyone to be their 'type.'"Gramma: "Did you hear that? Your daddy's a superhero!”

“Jazz hadn't given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he'd told her enough that she knew it wasn't hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals.”

“Are you stalking me, Mr. Fulton?" The idea both amused and horrified Jazz.”

“A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.”

“What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?...The term was faith.”

“I won't let myself be used or manipulated. I won't let myself be a hypocrite.I am foe me.I am not weak.For anyone.”

“When you feel like things are out of control, you take control.Yeah, that's what you do. Take control.So, yeah.Oh, yeah.”

“I don't know and I don't care anymore. I was supposed to have my way for once, just once in my life. I did everything right and I got nothing for it.I want to kill them all. no, better yet, I want to die. No, even bettter than that: I want to kill them all then die.”

“You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital. That's just from movies and TV shows and stuff like that. You didn't really try to kill yourself. you just wanted attention, but you screwed up. Try harder next time.”

“I suddenly realize that I'm naked, which shouldn't bother me since it's the phone, but for some reason it does. "How's it hanging?" Kyra asks and now I think I'm blushing. It's just an expression, but jeez!”

“The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.”“That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.”

“We can know what love is. It’s adults who have forgotten, so they cling to their poor substitute and yell at kids who dare to live with real love. Pure love. Love without compromise or distraction. Hell, when you’re a kid you’ve got all the energy and all the free time in the world. You’ll never have the chance to devote more to love ever again in your life.”

“Here’s the thing about baseball-it’s not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that.Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter’s box like a soldier and it’s up to him-and him alone-what happens next.But here’s the thing I didn’t understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run…Someone else has to pitch the ball.”

“And I think of nothing.I think of nothing but Rachel.What happens next is pure magic, and is for us and us alone.”

“You don’t break up with someone just because of an argument, Josh. At least, I don’t.”

“It's not an easy choice, but that's OK. Easy doesn't equal good. Difficulty doesn't equal bad.It's just life, is all.”

“But it's high school. It's not real love, or at least you can't be sure it's real love. Real love is messy and complicated and brutal. It's been tested. Zik and Michelle have never been tested by anything mroe than being separated by a couple of classes.”

“And it's true. It's so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve... I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask.But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.”

“You don't swing at any pitch. You swing at the ones you can hit.”

“It's just a base hit, people. It means nothing unless we put a string of them together.”

“Zik spits into the dirt in from of home plate, his own little ritual. He digs in and grits his teeth, snarling at the Heat. Psychology. Baseball's all about psychology.”

“Unreal. I'm feeling nostalgic for something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago. This has got to be a record.”

“He fucked my wife!" George wailed. "He ruined my life!""Your wife was a goddamn whore!”