Jeff Lindsay Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It happens; incompetence is rewarded more often than not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The first rejection that 'Dexter' got, I was like, 'OK. This hasn't worked. Let's try something else. I'll go get a teaching job or something.'

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.'

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.

I certainly try to avoid getting bogged down in forensics. There is certainly a whole lot of other writers who know a lot more than me about it. I know enough about it to do a little bit of background on laboratory techniques and stuff. But it kind of bores me.

I do as much as I can. I even drive through the chase scenes several times to make sure the details are right.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

And I was having too much fun to stop now.

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.

Dying makes everyone weaker, subject to painful insight, and not always insight into any kind of special truth - it's just the approaching end that makes people want to believe they are seeing something in the line of a great revelation.

What a terrible thing life can be.

you can’t use logic on human behavior.

The key to a happy life is to have accomplishments to be proud of and purpose to look forward to, and at the moment I had both. How wonderful it was to be me.

It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being. Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO. The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile. What a scamp.

It's terrible to have to depend on someone else.

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.

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

And as always seems to happen when I have reached the point where I am ready to take decisive action, everything began to happen at once.

I did not like this feeling of having feelings.

Killing makes me feel good.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Now I know what it is like to feel like a total idiot.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

She really did like me, the idiot.

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?

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

Was insanity really easier to accept than unconsciousness?

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.

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

For my part, my interest in Paris had faded away completely long ago when I learned that it was in France.

A reasonable being might think that he and I could find some common ground; have a cup of coffee and compare our Passengers, exchange trade talk and chitchat about dismemberment techniques. But no: Doakes wanted me dead. And I found it difficult to share his point of view.

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

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.

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.

I nodded with genuine synthetic sympathy.

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