Top 90 Barry Lyga Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I don’t know and I don’t care anymore. I was supposed to have my way for once, just once in my life. I did everything right and I got nothing for it. I want to kill them all. no, better yet, I want to die. No, even bettter than that: I want to kill them all then die.”

— Barry Lyga

2. “Pain means you’re alive. Pain is good. Pain is life.”

— Barry Lyga

3. “It’s not an easy choice, but that’s OK. Easy doesn’t equal good. Difficulty doesn’t equal bad. It’s just life, is all.”

— Barry Lyga

4. “Fear can keep you alive. The trick is not to let it overwhelm you. Not to let it rule you. If you’re afraid, that’s the universe trying to tell you something. Get away. Don’t run; don’t panic. Just pick up and walk out, calm as you please. Panic makes you stupid.”

— Barry Lyga

5. “What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster?”

— Barry Lyga

6. “This is why I forgive, but I don’t forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

— Barry Lyga

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

— Barry Lyga

8. “At least you’ll be alive to hate me.”

— Barry Lyga

9. “One time you told me that the opposite of love isn’t hate. And I didn’t understand that, but I think I do know. Because if you hate someone, you most still care, right? You have to care a little bit; otherwise you would just ignore them and forget they even live. Or lived.”

— Barry Lyga

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

— Barry Lyga

11. “See, forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not an event – it’s a process.”

— Barry Lyga

12. “We humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors.”

— Barry Lyga

13. “Any man worth having will wait for his woman to be ready. How can I not return the favor?”

— Barry Lyga

14. “Somethings are private. And they should stay that way and they get to stay that way. This isn’t preschool; I don’t have to share.”

— Barry Lyga

15. “And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we’re us.”

— Barry Lyga

16. “Unreal. I’m feeling nostalgic for something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago. This has got to be a record.”

— Barry Lyga

17. “It just means that if someone hates you, they still have feelings for you. If they really didn’t care about you, they’d just forget about you. They wouldn’t even waste the time hating you.”

— Barry Lyga

18. “You won’t even know you’ve crossed the line until it’s way back in your rearview mirror.”

— Barry Lyga

19. “You don’t break up with someone just because of an argument, Josh. At least, I don’t.”

— Barry Lyga

20. “I do what I’ve trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching. I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher’s mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three.”

— Barry Lyga

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

— Barry Lyga

22. “I taught you everything you know, but not everything I know.”

— Barry Lyga

23. “That’s what I thought I was. A stalker of stalkers. A predator preying on predators.”

— Barry Lyga

24. “Josh Mendel has a secret. Unfortunately, everyone knows what it is.”

— Barry Lyga

25. “Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.”

— Barry Lyga

26. “Jazz hadn’t given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he’d told her enough that she knew it wasn’t hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals.”

— Barry Lyga

27. “You know the expression ‘As a crow flies,’ don’t you? People use it to mean a straight line. And that’s very important. Because the way a capital-c Crow flies is a straight line. It may appear jagged to some, but the Crow flies in a straight line to its goal.”

— Barry Lyga

28. “Look, my dad has a saying – we’ll burn that bridge when get to it. OK? You get it? Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

— Barry Lyga

29. “Yes, pain meant life. But the symmetric property did not apply; Life did not mean pain.”

— Barry Lyga

30. “People can wonder and ponder and imagine all they want. But their curiosity does not entitle them to enter my world.”

— Barry Lyga

31. “Medicine cabinets are dangerous. Those doors, man. They’ll just spring on you like a ninja.”

— Barry Lyga

32. “Well, of course it was Billy screwing with his mind. That’s what Billy did. Dear Old Dad had a PhD in mind screwing. The question was, was it just Billy screwing with his mind?”

— Barry Lyga

33. “Life amuses me, Jasper. Until it don’t no more.” He grinned. “When you’re a happy guy, you find amusement in all kinds of places. Even in here.”

— Barry Lyga

34. “Cars are little privacy cocoons that we take with us. If you could refuel while driving you could, theoretically, stay moving forever.”

— Barry Lyga

35. “If you don’t feel anything, you can’t be hurt.”

— Barry Lyga

36. “A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.”

— Barry Lyga

37. “That you I feel up in my brain, trying to rummage around inside my head, rearrange the furniture? I don’t think that’ll work. I taught you everything you know, but not everything I know.”

— Barry Lyga

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

— Barry Lyga

39. “You don’t swing at any pitch. You swing at the ones you can hit.”

— Barry Lyga

40. “We can know what love is. It’s adults who have forgotten, so they cling to their poor substitute and yell at kids who dare to live with real love. Pure love. Love without compromise or distraction. Hell, when you’re a kid you’ve got all the energy and all the free time in the world. You’ll never have the chance to devote more to love ever again in your life.”

— Barry Lyga

41. “You’re not smart enough to be afraid of me.”

— Barry Lyga

42. “He moved to run a hand through her cornrows, then pulled back remembering the one time he’s tried that-Connie had lectured him on the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not touch thy black girlfriend’s hair. Ever.”

— Barry Lyga

43. “Jazz felt as though his own life was a mindfield, one he’d lost the map for. One wrong step and he’d lose a foot or leg. or his mind.”

— Barry Lyga

44. “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!”

— Barry Lyga

45. “Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.”

— Barry Lyga

46. “Less than I want. More than I deserve.”

— Barry Lyga

47. “And I think of nothing. I think of nothing but Rachel. What happens next is pure magic, and is for us and us alone.”

— Barry Lyga

48. “His safe haven had turned into an ambush.”

— Barry Lyga

49. “Au contraire, mein Freund.”

— Barry Lyga

50. “I have to stop getting shot.”

— Barry Lyga