Quotes from Jeff Lindsay

There was no deadly serpent hidden in my desk drawer, no assegais hurtling at my neck from a passing car, nothing. Even Deborah and her blistering arm punches were taking a holiday. I saw her and even spoke to her, of course. Her arm was still in a cast, and I would have expected her to call on me quite often for help, but she did not. Duarte was apparently picking up the slack, and Debs seemed content to live on a much lower dose of Dexter. So

It was like I was the victim of some strange and sinister Dexter-persecuting Tibetan sect—whenever the old Dexter-hating Lama died, a new one was born to take his place.

I could have told her that I was quite convinced, and that she would be, too, if she talked to Samantha for five minutes. But when Deborah makes up her mind, it takes a written order from the police commissioner to change it, and I didn't think there was one in the works.

It was far too much to hope that the feds would investigate or prosecute him, of course, but they were aware that something was not quite right in Smallville—"Small" referring, of course, to Anderson's IQ. That

He paused and turned to face me. "Yes, brother, let's," he said. "A good old-fashioned chin-wag. Catch up with each other and all that. Tell me, how are you coming along with finding that missing girl?" I

This had not changed in thousands of years, and it might very well stay just like this for another five or six years, until somebody wanted to build condos. Beautiful wild things were killing each other all around me, and there was something soothing about sitting here and feeling like I was a part of a process that went on practically forever. Maybe there really was something to this whole Nature business after all.

I remembered my admiration of the heron back in the swamp: so cute and fuzzy, and so very deadly. Was it possible that Crowley was not a bland doofus at all, but was actually another of Nature's great achievements, something like the heron, which looked so tame and pleasant that it got right on top of you and got its beak into you while you were still admiring the plumage? It was possible. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was likely, too. Crowley was my Shadow. He

And it is: a true temple of suffering, and tonight we are its priest, master of the rites, and we will lead him through our ritual and into the last epiphany, to the final release into grace. We

It was a touchy problem, and it would call for a rare and difficult combination of flattery and firmness, mixed with just the right touch of compassionate understanding, and I was certain it would be a real challenge to my skill as a Human Impersonator. I

All right," I said, since there wasn't much else to say. "But I don't know if I can show you how blood spatter works without showing you blood." He

Illegitimi non carborundum, I suppose.

I AM NOT REALLY PARANOID. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT I AM surrounded by mysterious enemies who seek to trap me, torture me, kill me. Of course, I know very well that if I allow my disguise to slip and reveal me for what I am, then this entire society will join together in calling for my slow and painful death, but this is not paranoia—this is a calm, clearheaded view of consensus reality, and I am not frightened by it. I simply try to be careful so it doesn't happen.

He had been counting coup on me, that ancient game of the Plains Indians. It was the ultimate insult if you were a Lakota, a failure of manhood so shameful it could actually end a warrior's life when it happened, to be touched by an enemy while you stood helpless—but I was not a Native American.

Not surprisingly—at least, not to me—they didn't find him or her.

Is that what you call it now?" she said, and although her words might as well have been in Estonian, for all the sense they made, her tone was very clear, and it did not hold even the memory of anything pleasant. I

His hair had not grown back in the last hour, but he had at least changed out of the orange coverall and into a white terry-cloth robe and he was lying there in the middle of the bed shaved, shaking, and sweating heavily with a half-empty bottle of Skyy Vodka lying beside him. Deborah didn't even slow down at the door. She charged right over to the bed and sat beside him, taking his only hand in her only hand. Love among the ruins.

So with a face set in Prisoner's Ennui, an expression I was getting quite good at, I allowed Lazlo to lead me over to the thick bulletproof window, with its phone receiver on each side, its chairs facing each other through the glass, and Deborah sitting in the seat on the far side.

Curiosity, as the saying goes, killed the cat. And it has frequently proved lethal to nonfelines as well. And

I don't," Cody insisted. Now he was not only standing up to both of us, he was practically breaking his own record for chattiness at the same time. And even though I didn't have a heart, except for circulatory purposes, I felt an affection for him and wanted to come down on his side.

Barely, only just almost, I could understand Deborah's decision not to help me. Her career was everything to her, and I really was, after all, all she said I was and feared I would be again. I was and I would be, undeniably, unchangeably, and eagerly. It made a certain sense for her to think that way, and while I could never endorse it as a plan of action, I could at least comprehend the mental process that had led her there.

The gods of the forest have smiled upon us," I said. "Cream-filled or raspberry jelly?

So I sat for a few more minutes, trying to think, and realizing only that I was still not as good at it as I used to be. Maybe I never really was. I'd probably just been stumbling along wrapped in a cloud of ignorant luck, unaware that there was a huge storm of Retribution trailing along behind me. It had caught up to me at last, and I wasn't going to think myself out of it.

Dorothy was right. There's no place like home. It

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. I