Barry Lyga

“Women always cried. It was their last, best weapon. It made boyfriends apologize and husbands fold them in their arms. It made Daddy spend the extra money on the prom dress.”

“See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event -- it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, while you're dreaming, while you're inline at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore, that your anger has gone away somewhere. And you understand. You've forgiven them. You don't know how or why. It sneaked up on you. It happened in the small spaces between thoughts and in the seconds between ideas and blinks. That's where forgiveness happens. Because anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth. At least, that's what I hope.”

“Anger was a waste of time and energy. Anger was useless."Anger" was the label given to the emotion that accomplished nothing.”

“What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?.”

“You think you're gonna find your soul. Ever since I've known you, you've been thinkin' that someday you're gonna crack and end up like your daddy. And you're been looking for proof that you won't. What you don't realize is this: the looking is the proof. Trust me when I tell you that Billy Dent never had a moment's doubt in his life about what he was and what he was doing. Your doubt is your soul”

“Your words hurt, Jazz. They hurt like cotton balls thrown in my direction.”

“Howie: "What if the whole thing was just an accident?"Jazz: "And what? Accidentally cut off three fingers postmortem? 'Oops, oh no, my girlfriend just died! Clumsy me, in trying to perform CPR, I chopped off some fingers! Guess I'll take them with me…Oh, darn, where did that middle finger go?”

“There were dragons, in his dreams, as though some part of him knew the trials were not yet over, that there were battles yet to be fought. He slept fitfully, fidgeting, tossing and turning, groaning and crying out in his sleep.”

“I suddenly realize that I'm naked, which shouldn't bother me since it's the phone, but for some reason it does. "How's it hanging?" Kyra asks and now I think I'm blushing. It's just an expression, but jeez!”

“The best revenge is living well, my dad told me once.”

“You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital. That's just from movies and TV shows and stuff like that. You didn't really try to kill yourself. you just wanted attention, but you screwed up. Try harder next time.”

“I’m a complicated man, with complicated taste buds.”

“Psychologist: "This, ah, is a new sort of, ah, psychopathology that we're only now beginning to, ah, understand. These, ah, super-serial killers have no, ah, 'type' but, ah, rather consider everyone to be their 't”