M. William Phelps > Quotes

“As the years pass by, we’ll glance at faded photographs recalling memories shared with special friends and family, never wanting it to end. Memories are the only thing left within the end.” Judy”
― M. William Phelps, Murderers' Row: A Collection of Shocking True Crime Stories

“The bottom line is that heat kills more people than any other natural disaster, and yet heat waves go unnamed.”
― M. William Phelps, The Devil's Rooming House: The True Story of America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer

“How did the apartment look?” Riggle wondered. “Nothing was out of place.”
― M. William Phelps, Don't Tell a Soul

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”—Franz Kafka”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“It’s not easy to find old-school journalism in true crime … yet with Lethal Intent, author Sue Russell proves how integrity, tenacity, brutal truth and honest reporting become essential components to what is a riveting—if not terrifying—narrative of America’s most hated ‘monster,’ Aileen Carol Wuornos. It’s not easy humanizing serial killers, but through an objective lens, clear and defined, Russell paints a graphic portrait of Wuornos’ evil intentions and rough life—a true page-turner, breathless, intense—but also important.”
― M. William Phelps, Bad Girls

“Some would call this “volcanic rage”—a mind state that murderers need to enter in order to commit the crime—although they are well aware of what’s going on around them. Another”
― M. William Phelps, Obsessed

“My life and my mind, I realized, were screwed up enough without me adding to it with drugs.”
― M. William Phelps, I'd Kill For You

“Ben Espey sat at his desk and looked over his notes.”
― M. William Phelps, Murder In The Heartland

“A fictional character living in a nonfiction world.”
― M. William Phelps, Lethal Guardian

“Lots of women are doing time for love and fear.”
― M. William Phelps, Targeted: A Deputy, Her Love Affairs, A Brutal Murder

“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.”—William Hazlitt”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“They were fooling themselves, however—because they were not experiencing true feelings of love, but the promise of it. They never thought about the sacrament of love or the responsibility that went with it. To them, love was an uncontainable urge, a power beyond their control, out of their hands. They were addicted to it, in a sense. The mere fact that over one hundred miles separated their homes and Jeanne was trying to put a wedge between the relationship early on only made them believe they wanted each other more.”
― M. William Phelps, Because You Loved Me

“When I got divorced and we were in court, I looked at my kids and they were in pain. But here’s the thing—it made me feel warm inside to know that I was responsible for that pain. I actually was happy that they were suffering and would continue to suffer from the divorce.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl; I give my blood for her.... I give my time, my skill, my sleep; I let my other sufferers want that so she may have all.” —Bram Stoker, Dracula”
― M. William Phelps, I'd Kill For You

“The gut speaks—and rarely lies—of what is and what is to come.”
― M. William Phelps, Where Monsters Hide: Sex, Murder, and Madness in the Midwest

“By April 1990, Alan and Jessica had lived with his parents for nearly two months. They decided to move, however. The best place was Hoover, into Jessica’s mother and stepfather’s house. Sam was a month old. Living in Hoover would be more”
― M. William Phelps, Death Trap

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”—C.S. Lewis”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“Serial killers suck the life out of the people around them. They harbor an effortless capability of donning what psychopathy pioneer and psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley coined in 1941 as “the mask of sanity.” It was Cleckley’s work before his death in 1984 that flexed Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Hare’s mental muscle enough to develop his Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R): twenty characteristics defining psychopathic behavior. Used properly, the PCL-R checklist is an accurate way to determine the psychopath from the non-psychopath.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“The way they both believed that as long as they told a lie long enough, to as many people as possible, that it should be believed because they said it. Community”
― M. William Phelps, We Thought We Knew You: A Terrifying True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, Deception, and Murder

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”—Virginia Woolf”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”—Dr. Wayne W. Dyer”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“Unusual and irrational thoughts plague serial killers, as they have no capacity for gratitude or concern.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“NE OF THE MOST FAMOUS ARSENICAL POISONING cases on record (which could never be emphatically proven beyond a reasonable doubt) is, of course, that of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was said to have been poisoned to death with arsenic over a period of time by one (or several) of his own men. Regardless”
― M. William Phelps, The Devil's Rooming House: The True Story of America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer

“Well, evil to some is always good to others.” —Jane Austen, Emma”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“I beg for your forgiveness,” Billy continued. He prayed Nicole wouldn’t break up with him—but not before laying a proverbial guilt trip on her, twisting the situation around, conceivably hoping to shift the blame from himself to the other person involved. He undoubtedly knew how weak Nicole was. How easy it was to manipulate her, especially in the state of numbness she had been in lately. She was vulnerable. Alone. She had no one else in her life to confide in. And Billy knew it. “…I don’t deserve you.”
― M. William Phelps, Because You Loved Me

“Dr. Kent Kiehl, neuroscientist and author of The Psychopath Whisperer, a man who’s dedicated his life’s work to clinical brain imaging in order to understand mental illness, especially criminal psychopathy, says, “The best current estimate is that just less than one percent of all noninstitutionalized males age eighteen and over are psychopaths.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“for life: a cycle and a circle, all at once. Not much of anything happens in most lives from day to day. And most people take for granted how pleasant that silence and routine can be in the scope of what could happen—as Nelson was about to learn. It’s not until a person’s world blows up in front of his very face that he yearns for the return of that subtle boredom and monotonous sameness that everyday life offers. As Nelson”
― M. William Phelps, Obsessed

“The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.”—Albert Schweitzer”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“He anticipated the moment when they realized he was a serial killer. Thinking about that, he couldn’t face the rejection, ridicule, and public scorn about to fall on him. This was what kept him up at night. The only way out, he reconciled, was suicide.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

“I considered that most serial killers, when you come down to it, are cowards. They’re full of fear.”
― M. William Phelps, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer