“The key to excellent report writing' he said between chews, 'is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one's superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don't notice the fact that one has been spinning one's wheels since the body turned up and hasn't solved a goddamn thing.”

“All of us are like locks. No matter how strong the bolt, there’s always a key out there that opens it.”

“a Jew had to have two synagogues. One that he went to, one that he rejected.”

“Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do another one grows back in its place.”

“Too many cases thrown out of court, too much pop-psycho crap, satanic bullshit... if you FEEL you've been abused, you HAVE been!”

“A good chunk of my life had been spent sorting out the scrambled communications, festering hostilities, and frozen affections that characterized families in turmoil. (257)”

“It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was murder.”