Jeff Lindsay

“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.”

“Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?”

“As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.”

“They like to tell us that it is important to speak the truth, but it has been my experience that real happiness lies in having people tell you what you want to believe, usually not the same thing at all, and if you have to stub your toe on the truth later, so be it.”

“I did not like this feeling of having feelings.”

“The mind picks some very bad times to take a walk doesn't it?”

“What, in all very seriousness, the hell was going on?”

“Killing makes me feel good.”

“Could this be the Apocalypse?”

“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”

“…a cheerful black shadow reared up behind him as he spoke, thundering a happy challenge to my Dark Passenger, which slid forward and bellowed back.”

“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.”

“I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.”

“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.”

“No big deal. We all have blood in us, the trick is keeping it inside.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And here I always thought morality was useless”

“Another beautiful Miami day. Mutilated corpses with a chance of afternoon showers. I got dressed and went to work.”

“Another dream. Another long-distance call on my phantom party line. No wonder i had steadfastly refused to have dreams for most of my life. So stupid; such pointless, obvious symbols. Totally uncontrollable anxiety soup, hateful, blatant nonsense.”

“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'm a very neat monster." ~Dexter Morgan”

“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.”

“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.”

“Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?”

“I know family comes first, but shouldn't that mean after breakfast?”

“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.”

“Rectory always sounded to me like a place you would find a proctologist.”

“In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toin and suffering.”

“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.”

“Feeling - what authentic human fun!”

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

“A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches”

“And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.”

“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?”

“been there done that, bought the t-shirt" Chapter 2”

“Money to me had always been merely something the sheep used to show each other how wonderful they were.”

“...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.”

“You're driving me NORMAL!”

“It's that moon again, slung so fat and low in the tropical night, calling out across a curdled sky and into the quivering ears of that dear old voice in the shadows, the Dark Passenger, nestled snug in the backseat of the Dodge K-car of Dexter's hypothetical soul.That rascal moon, that loudmouthed leering Lucifer, calling down across the empty sky to the dark hearts of the night monsters below, calling them away to their joyful playgrounds.”

“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.”

“Life's only obligation, afterall, was to be interesting.”

“Because I am an inhuman monster, I tend to be logical,...”

“And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.”

“Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be a semi-formal occasion. ”

“I'm not sure what I am. I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. I certainly don't talk about it, but it's there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he's driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don't fight him, I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even... especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else... someone. It's like the mask is slipping and things... people... who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me.”

“Pero, por triste que sea, la vida no siempre imita al arte. -Dexter”

“¿Acaso no estábamos todos locos cuando dormíamos? ¿Qué era el sueño, al fin y al cabo, sino el proceso por el cual vaciábamos nuestra demencia al pozo oscuro del inconsciente quedando así listos para levantarse a la mañana siguiente y a desayunarnos con cereales en lugar de hacerlo con los niños del vecino? -Dexter”

“Cualquiera puede ser encantador si no le importa mentir y decir todas las cosas estúpidas, obvias y nauseabundas que la conciencia suele reprimir en la mayoría de la gente. Por suerte, yo no tengo conciencia. Y las digo. -Dexter”