Top 180 Jeff Lindsay Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Oh,” I said, and my eyes pop open to the fluorescent light of Deborah’s office, and no matter how hard I try to push it away and find a way not to believe it, the things I saw do not change. Even in the harsh and ugly light of the office the picture is the same, and even worse, I now see Deb and Jackie staring at me uncertainly, as if they had been watching me urinate on a busy street. “Oh, um,” I say. “It’s, you know. I just thought of something.”

— Jeff Lindsay

102. “First I walked into a trap and nearly turned into the Inhuman Torch, and then a man I had regarded as a foot soldier in the war against intelligence turned out to be a covert general – and to top it off, he was apparently in league with the last few living pieces of my nemesis, Sergeant Doakes, and he seemed very likely to take up where Doakes had left off, in the pursuit of poor persecuted Dexter. Where would this end?”

— Jeff Lindsay

103. “And so there we were, balanced on a knife edge that was unfortunately only metaphorical. Sooner or later, I had to be me. But until then I would see an awful lot of Rita. She couldn’t hold a candle to my old flame, the Dark Passenger, but I did need my secret identity. And until I escaped Doakes, Rita was my cape, red tights, and utility belt – almost the entire costume.”

— Jeff Lindsay

104. “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.”

— Jeff Lindsay

105. “I was a near perfect hologram.”

— Jeff Lindsay

106. “We even had dessert, which seemed to me to be pushing the distract-them-with-food ploy a little far, particularly since neither Deborah nor I was at all distracted. But it was quite good food, so it would have been barbaric of me to complain.”

— Jeff Lindsay

107. “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.”

— Jeff Lindsay

108. “It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.”

— Jeff Lindsay

109. “Art was creating something new, not mimicking something already in existence. What.”

— Jeff Lindsay

110. “It was Rogelio, Chutsky’s friend from the front desk, who was going to tell us when Weiss checked in. But it certainly didn’t look like he was going to tell us much of anything, unless we listened to him with a Ouija board. Because if appearances were any guide at all, judging by the belt so tightly wrapped around his neck and the way his tongue and eyes bulged out, Rogelio was extremely dead.”

— Jeff Lindsay

111. “And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.”

— Jeff Lindsay

112. “Apparently the police were hot on the trail of the Tamiami Butcher. There were no specifics available, but Captain Matthews got a lovely sound bite. He made it seem like he would personally make the arrest as soon as he finished his coffee.”

— Jeff Lindsay

113. “I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities.”

— Jeff Lindsay

114. “He smiled at me, the irritating, superior kind of smile that I would love to try sometime when I wasn’t in disguise. “You didn’t read your history, did you?” he said. “I don’t think this chapter was assigned. What are you talking about?”

— Jeff Lindsay

115. “The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.”

— Jeff Lindsay

116. “But honesty is not always the best policy, no matter what the Boy Scouts may tell you. So I just shook my head at his inane question. “Too soon to tell,” I said.”

— Jeff Lindsay

117. “Still a monster, of course, but I cleaned up nicely afterwards, and I was OUR monster, dressed in red, white, and blue 100 percent synthetic virtue.”

— Jeff Lindsay

118. “But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn’t sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.”

— Jeff Lindsay

119. “I stood up. It was all too much. I could not even meet my own expectations, and to be asked to deal with all theirs too was suffocating.”

— Jeff Lindsay

120. “It’s not that I have anything to hide – I’ve already hidden all of it – but.”

— Jeff Lindsay

121. “What a terrible thing life can be.”

— Jeff Lindsay

122. “I think that’s nice, and if I could have feelings at all I would have them for Deb.”

— Jeff Lindsay

123. “Talk to me, I whispered to the Dark Passenger. Tell me what you have done.”

— Jeff Lindsay

124. “And in any case, it was embarrassing, something you didn’t really want to see, like watching somebody clean their nostrils with a fingertip. I cleared my throat as I came in to my chair, but he didn’t look up.”

— Jeff Lindsay

125. “Of course Dexter always applauds the charitable spirit. But in general, I am so very much in favor of it because it is nearly always a warning sign that something nefarious, wicked, and playful is going on behind the Mother Teresa mask.”

— Jeff Lindsay

126. “He had an AM radio playing a conservative talk show. The host was making some very interesting statements about the president. I don’t usually pay much attention to politics, but from what the man said, I had to believe that sometime in the recent past the laws regarding sedition must have changed.”

— Jeff Lindsay

127. “Was this what it was like to be human? Were people actually so miserable and brainless that they looked forward to this – to spending Friday night, precious time off from wage slave drudgery, sitting in front of a television with a can of beer? It was mind-numbingly dull, and to my horror, I found that I was getting used to it.”

— Jeff Lindsay

128. “When faced with people who have very limited conversational skills and no apparent desire to cultivate any it’s always easier to simply go along.”

— Jeff Lindsay

129. “Somehow I slogged through the gray soup of the rest of the day and made it all the way home to Rita’s at the end of the day, where the soup gelled into an aspic of sensory deprivation.”

— Jeff Lindsay

130. “Still, it’s always nice to be around somebody who thinks I am wonderful. It confirms my low opinion of people.”

— Jeff Lindsay

131. “A man can take only so much. Even a phony man like me.”

— Jeff Lindsay

132. “It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens... The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too.”

— Jeff Lindsay

133. “Whoever claimed honesty is the best policy, or even a good one, clearly had very limited experience with the real world.”

— Jeff Lindsay

134. “There are millions of homeless children in the world – which proved again that kids were a low-value commodity, didn’t it? I mean, there are very few homeless Bentleys in the world.”

— Jeff Lindsay

135. “Either Kyle was lucky or his mojo had bowled over the headwaiter, because he and Deborah were waiting outside at one of these tables working on a bottle of mineral water and a plate of what appeared to be crab cakes. I grabbed one and took a bite as I slid into a chair facing Kyle. “Yummy,” I said. “This must be where good crabs go when they die.”

— Jeff Lindsay

136. “It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn’t reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.”

— Jeff Lindsay

137. “It was really quite flattering to think that minor damage to my skull could cause such a display of hydrotechnics, but at the same time it left me slightly uneasy about what my response ought to be.”

— Jeff Lindsay

138. “It was a brilliant train of pure cool logic; I welcomed the return of my giant brain and mentally patted myself on the head. Good boy, Dexter. Arf arf.”

— Jeff Lindsay

139. “No, you don’t understand. She told me to get you back. She’s made up her mind and I don’t dare disobey. She hits very hard.”

— Jeff Lindsay

140. “Aside from the fruit basket, the room was as empty as the inside of Dexter on the shelf marked SOUL.”

— Jeff Lindsay

141. “But here I was, a demon on vacation, attempting the ultimate sacrifice by giving up my powers and becoming human – and so a beer was just the thing for Dipsophobic Dexter.”

— Jeff Lindsay

142. “It had been my experience that fatherhood was mostly a matter of suffering the insufferable, tolerating the intolerable, and changing diapers.”

— Jeff Lindsay

143. “I took pride in being the best dressed monster in Dade County.”

— Jeff Lindsay

144. “I mean, really: what kind of person could possibly dislike me?”

— Jeff Lindsay

145. “I really am guilty, of many somethings, all of them lethal and very enjoyable and technically not quite legal.”

— Jeff Lindsay

146. “You need an action hero, somebody who can kick down the door and storm in with guns blazing. I’m just a mild-mannered forensics geek.”

— Jeff Lindsay

147. “After a long moment I closed the freezer door. I wanted to lie down and press my cheek against the cool linoleum. Instead I reached out with my little finger and flipped the Barbie’s head. It went thack thack against the door. I flipped it again. Thack thack. Whee. I had a new hobby.”

— Jeff Lindsay

148. “As Deborah had so astutely pointed out, I was engaged and still didn’t get it.”

— Jeff Lindsay

149. “If only I was capable of love, how I would have loved Harry.”

— Jeff Lindsay

150. “This whole business of telling the truth just never seems to work without some kind of awkward unpleasantness.”

— Jeff Lindsay