Jeff Lindsay Quotes

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

I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

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

Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don't have a conscience. I say them.

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

I am unlovable...I have tried to involve myself in other people, in relationships, and even - in my sillier moments - in love. But it doesn't work. Something in me is broken or missing and sooner or later the other person catches me Acting or one of Those Nights comes along.

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?

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

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

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.

And I was having too much fun to stop now.

Our universe is ruled by random whim, inhabited by people who laugh at logic.

you can’t use logic on human behavior.

It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Mutilated corpses with a chance of afternoon showers. I got dressed and went to work.

It happens; incompetence is rewarded more often than not.

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

I'm a very neat monster.

It really is better to be lucky than to be good.

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

I was never more alive than when the Dark Passenger was driving.

I mean, really: what kind of person could possibly dislike me?

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?

I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.

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

IN MY LIFELONG STUDY OF HUMAN BEINGS, I HAVE FOUND that no matter how hard they might 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 workaday lives of meaningless toil and suffering.

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

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.

Killing makes me feel good.

What a terrible thing life can be.

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

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

Was insanity really easier to accept than unconsciousness?

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.

Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.

…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.

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 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.

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

I did not like this feeling of having feelings.

I thought about the nice clothes that I always wore. Well of course I did. I took pride in being the best dressed monster in Dade County.

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?

...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.

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.