Quotes from Jeff Lindsay

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

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.

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.

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

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

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

The law, as an institution, avoids justice, subverts it, just as often as it sees it done.

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.

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.

Nothing else loves me, or ever will. Not even - especially - me. I know what I am and that is not a thing to love.

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

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.

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

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

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. We congratulate a rival on a triumph when actually we are choking on spite. We are cordial and attentive to crashing bores.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.