Top 161 Quotes & Sayings by Jeff Lindsay

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

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

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.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

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

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We're predators; we don't eat meat because it's handy, we eat meat because we have a taste for blood.

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

Sociopaths don't have feelings; they can't.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.

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.

I did not like this feeling of having feelings.

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?

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.

...she opened the door very slowly and carefully, half hiding behind it, as if badly frightened of what might be waiting for her on the other side. And considering that it was me waiting, this showed rare common sense.

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

No big deal. We all have blood in us, the trick is keeping it inside.

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?

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.

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.

It was almost enough to make me feel emotion.

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.

I often find myself in situations where it seems to me like everyone else has read the instruction book

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.

Life's only obligation, afterall, was to be interesting.