Jeff Lindsay Quotations

When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'

It happens; incompetence is rewarded more often than not.

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.

Life would certainly be easier if we all came equipped with our own personal FAQ lists. When we meet someone, we could pass them a business card with the list on the back, and then step back and let them read before we tried to talk.

My first true lesson in writing came from Mr. Bowden when I was 16. At my high school, he was the teacher known to be the very best at literature and writing.

My father was one of the first six guys ashore on Iwo Jima. He's 86 years old now, and every single night of his life, he has nightmares, and he wakes yelling.

I wish to God I was organized enough to tell you that, 'Yes, there will be 14 books, and this one will go here, and that one will go there'... but to be honest, I hardly know what I'm going to do when I get up in the morning.

I don't have much time to sit and watch a lot of TV. And I can't really binge-watch.

I don't agree with capital punishment as it is now, because too often mistakes are made. But I think that if you eliminate the mistakes, then there are times when it is justified.

We're predators; we don't eat meat because it's handy, we eat meat because we have a taste for blood.

Later, in the afternoon, I read what I did that morning. It's almost always a surprise. But I can read it rationally; edit, polish, re-write, and think what I might do tomorrow in the early darkness.

Marvel Comics has always been a place where I felt at home. It has been a very important part of my life and has always been a wellspring of creative and relevant ideas.

I was expecting someone dark to play 'Dexter' - someone like Johnny Depp.

We all pretend, we all hide things, so why not take the concept to an extreme? That is the basic idea for the character of Dexter. Pretend to be human, while quietly and carefully living out the life of a monster on the side.

Every writer must find a way of writing that tells the reader: This is me and no one else. The Voice can be idiosyncratic, but it cannot be obscure. It is a blend of style and content and intent and rhythm and pure personality.

What my research told me is that a psychopath cannot change. You're born like that.

Dexter-Land is a dark and scary place, and I couldn't live there permanently. To be honest, I don't think I even want to visit.

'Dexter' has been very, very good to me. I would rather stop doing it than cheapen it.

I wanted Dexter to have a family that could love him and understand him.

Pretending is the basis of civilised society, and it is sometimes necessary for all of us. Without it we are nothing more than a pack of snarling dogs.

Someone who is not a killer is not going to watch a TV show and decide to be a killer.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time.

I try to write as serious as possible, and then a joke slips in.

It was a tremendous stroke of good luck that the show got Michael C. Hall to play the part. Everyone I've talked to thinks Michael is a perfect 'Dexter,' which never happens.

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.'

It's a mistake to think that Dexter is nice.

I wanted to show life and to see ourselves and our behaviour through an outsider's eye... from the point of view of someone who knows nothing about being a human being... He doesn't have the feelings that the rest of us do.

No TV show in history, no movie ever made - nothing you can imagine as being written or filmed or performed can turn a normal human being into a Dexter.

I made a deliberate choice to write something people would enjoy, not knock people out with 'Boy, he can really put a clause together!'

I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can't write.

If you look at the primitive societies that we know about, the worst thing that could have happened to you was to be captured and be turned over to the women.

If you look at Victorian England, being a soldier was considered a noble profession.

I know a lot of law officers, and every single one of them faces a moment - usually after about three hours on the job - when they realise that there's no connection between law and justice.

In the afternoon, it's impossible to put down any new words. I don't even try.

I had been writing poems and stories since I learned to make letters. I had placed poems in a hardcover anthology at the age of 6. And I knew more big words than anyone else in the 10th grade.

I question every word; I write 'the' and immediately feel scorn. It's such an ordinary word - everybody uses it - why can't I come up with something original? In the sunlight, every single word seems hackneyed.

I didn't expect any success at all. I was rejected by every publisher in the world and every agent in town.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

Stop the nurse like the monkey.

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.

You're driving me NORMAL!

...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.

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

It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.

the faster it ran away from me. And I found myself reasoning that perhaps one more beer would unlock the doors of perception,

Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story.

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

Perhaps because I'll never be one, humans are interesting to me.

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?

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.

I was filled with dread at the thought my mind had skipped town and left me behind to pay the rent." --Dexter

There is a simple, logical explanation,' I said to myself. And because you never know who else is listening, I added, 'And there is nothing under the bed.'" --Dexter

That's why I liked him, I think. Another guy pretending to be human, just like me.

Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

I sighed; as comforting as it may be to some of us, sarcasm, like youth, is wasted on the young.

Could this be the Apocalypse ?

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.

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

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

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

Feeling - what authentic human fun!

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

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.

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.

And here I always thought morality was useless

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur.

What do you want a clock for?” “To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.

In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do The Thing for the first time, sanctioned by Almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, whole the other me crouched and growled. I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do. And I did.

I think that's nice, and if I could have feelings at all I would have them for Deb.

I'm a very neat monster." ~Dexter Morgan

And as we should all know by now, anytime you predict failure you have an excellent chance of being right.

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?

It’s like, everything really is two ways, the way we all pretend it is and the way it really is

I waved to everybody. Some of them even waved back. They knew me, had seen me go by before, always cheerful, a big hello for everybody. He was such a nice man. Very friendly. I can’t believe he did those horrible things . . .

The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.

But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.

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.

Nothing else loves me, nor ever will. Not even - especially - me. I know what I am and that's not a thing to love.

And so as much as I can, I care about her, dear Deborah. It's probably not love, but I would rather she were happy.

I enjoyed watching good-looking idiots looking at each other. A great spectator sport.

Me, feeling. What a concept.

Or was he saying, "Hi! Wanna play?" And I did. Of course I did.

I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities.

It was almost enough to make me feel emotion.

But of course, there's no rest for the wicked, which I certainly am; as I said, no rest for the wicked.

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

I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.

I really am guilty, of many somethings, all of them lethal and very enjoyable and technically not quite legal.

I nodded with genuine synthetic sympathy.

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.

It’s an odd term, 'girlfriend,' particularly for grown persons. And in practice it provides an even odder concept. Generally speaking, in adults it described a woman, not a girl, who was willing to provide sex, not friendship. In fact, from what I had observed it was quite possible for one to actively dislike one’s girlfriend, although of course true hatred is reserved for marriage.

This was just no fun. I wanted my brain back.