“There is nothing so bracing as planning a murder. I recommend it to the weak-willed and those with a leaky sense of self. It is fortifying as a drop of coagulant in a solution. I had planned (The word is too strong. Imagined. Anticipated?) this particular murder for so many years that it had taken on an air of performance and respectability. To understand how a murder can be domesticated and even humdrum may be hard for fans of the pounce of the soundtrack, the streak of scarlet, the gunky skeleton jiggling in the flashlight beam. But I am convinced that if murder is horrible, its for the overflow into the ordinary: severed heads in Ziploc bags, the dead baby in the dumpster behind Chubby’s. Anyone who has eaten a pork chop has all the information she needs for murder…It takes a special kind of person, a criminal, to commit a crime? You know better; in your dreams you’ve already tried it…”

“At the time of the murder, I had an airtight alibi: I spent the night in a Ziploc bag.”

“There is nothing that can throw you off your study plan faster than a murder on campus, even if the person murdered is someone you wouldn't mind never having to lay eyes on in this world or the next.”

“He had also learned that there is no use murdering people; there are always so many left, and if you tried to murder them all you would never get anything else done.”

“I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.”

“The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left for you, poor human murderers, to do? To kill your victims? But they already had the seed of death in them; all you could do was to hasten its fruition by a year or two.”