Quotes from Jeff Lindsay

Either Kyle was lucky or his mojo had bowled over the headwaiter, because he and Deborah were waiting outside at one of these tables working on a bottle of mineral water and a plate of what appeared to be crab cakes. I grabbed one and took a bite as I slid into a chair facing Kyle. "Yummy," I said. "This must be where good crabs go when they die.

And if so, I could fill my time with the new entry on my rather exclusive social register, whoever had created the Howling Vegetable of N.W. 4th Street, and the fact that this sounded rather like a Sherlock Holmes title made it no less urgent.

What's Hemingway?" Astor said. I watched the crowd of look-alikes milling around on the sidewalk, jostling each other and slurping beer. "A man who grew a beard and drank a lot," I said.

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 the neighbor's children?

They don't barrel into a room with guns blazing as most children of seven and ten do. As I have said, they were somewhat damaged by their dear old biological dad, and one consequence is that you never see them come and go: they enter the room by osmosis. One moment they are nowhere to be seen and the next they are standing quietly beside you, waiting to be noticed.

Of course Dexter always applauds the charitable spirit. But in general, I am so very much in favor of it because it is nearly always a warning sign that something nefarious, wicked, and playful is going on behind the Mother Teresa mask.

Earth to Dexter," Astor said, and I realized that I still stood in front of them frozen in my unlikely, foolish openmouthed pose like a pedantic zombie.

We even had dessert, which seemed to me to be pushing the distract-them-with-food ploy a little far, particularly since neither Deborah nor I was at all distracted. But it was quite good food, so it would have been barbaric of me to complain.

Because she had formed an image of me as a ravening monster?

It was Rogelio, Chutsky's friend from the front desk, who was going to tell us when Weiss checked in. But it certainly didn't look like he was going to tell us much of anything, unless we listened to him with a Ouija board. Because if appearances were any guide at all, judging by the belt so tightly wrapped around his neck and the way his tongue and eyes bulged out, Rogelio was extremely dead.

Whoever claimed honesty is the best policy, or even a good one, clearly had very limited experience with the real world.

Aramaic has no vowels. So MLK spells Moloch." "Or milk," Deborah said. "Really, Debs, if you think our killer would tattoo milk on his neck, you need a nap.

Because I am an inhuman monster, I tend to be logical, and I had thought that her new assignment would end her martyrdom as Our Lady of Perpetual Grumpiness.

I felt wrapped in a fog of dull pain that hurt only enough to remind me that it, too, was without purpose, and there seemed no point to going through the empty motions of breakfast, the long slow drive to work, no reason at all beyond the slavery of habit. But

Certainly no one on-site asked for my opinion, but I have always felt there should be no leftovers. It's untidy, and it shows a lack of a real workmanlike spirit.

Oh," I said, and my eyes pop open to the fluorescent light of Deborah's office, and no matter how hard I try to push it away and find a way not to believe it, the things I saw do not change. Even in the harsh and ugly light of the office the picture is the same, and even worse, I now see Deb and Jackie staring at me uncertainly, as if they had been watching me urinate on a busy street. "Oh, um," I say. "It's, you know. I just thought of something.

I felt like a ventriloquist's dummy, suddenly called upon to perform the whole act alone.

I gave myself a stern lecture, told myself to buck up, play the man, be a mensch, do what must be done, and after several similar clichés I began to believe I could do it, but the thought of it still tickled at me.

It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn't reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.

You need an action hero, somebody who can kick down the door and storm in with guns blazing. I'm just a mild-mannered forensics geek.

Rita bent her face down toward the floor and shuffled over to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. Then she sat across the table from me and took a sip. "Dexter," she said, "it's perfectly normal to have reservations." "Of course," I said, with absolutely no idea what she meant, "otherwise you don't get a table.

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.

Goddamn it!" she said to me through a mouthful of sandwich. It was certainly far from a novel phrase coming from her, but she said it with a viciousness that left me lightly spattered with bread crumbs. I took a sip of my excellent batido de mamey and waited for her to expand on her argument, but instead she simply said it again. "Goddamn it!

It was really quite flattering to think that minor damage to my skull could cause such a display of hydrotechnics, but at the same time it left me slightly uneasy about what my response ought to be.