Erin > Erin's Quotes

“It's like this," he'd explained once to Connie. "If someone gave you a single rose, you'd be happy, right?"
"Okay," he went on, "Now imagine someone gives you ten thousand roses."
"That is a whole lotta roses," she said. "That's too much."
"Right. Too much. But more than that, it makes each individual rose much less special, right? It makes it hard to pick one out and say, 'That's the good one.' And it makes you want to just get rid of them all because none of them seem special now."
Connie had narrowed her eyes. "Are you saying when you're at school you just want to get rid of everyone?”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“[She] was made up of skin and bones and hate and crazy, and hate and crazy don't weigh anything.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“...called nine-one-one," Howie was saying, "and then I heard something in the alleyway, so I went back there and" --Howie coughed-- "and valiantly attacked his knife with my guts, to no avail."

"Did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him?"

Howie smiled wanly. "Yeah. He was about yay long" --he held up his hands, four inches apart-- "thin, made of steel. Pointy. Sharp.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“Medicine cabinets are dangerous. Those doors, man. They'll just spring on you like a ninja.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“You won't even know you've crossed the line until it's way back in your rearview mirror.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“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.”
― Barry Lyga, Boy Toy

“Jazz spent a chunk of the day fantasizing about ways to kill his grandmother, plotting them and planning them in the most excruciating, gruesome detail his imagination would allow. It turned out his imagination allowed quite a bit. He spent the rest of the day convincing himself--over and over--not to do it.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“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, I Hunt Killers

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

...The term was faith.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“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, Goth Girl Rising

“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, I Hunt Killers

“And Jazz snapped.
He didn't snap the way a normal person might snap. A normal person would fling his arms around and stomp his feet and rant at the top of his lungs, bellowing to the sky. There might be tears, from a normal person.
Jazz went quiet. He darted out one hand and grabbed the wrist of the paramedic who had been trying to cuff him and pulled the man close, holding his gaze.
In a moment, he channeled every last drop of (his father).
"Who am I? I'll tell you. I'm the local psychopath, and if you don't save my best friend's life, I will hunt down everyone you've ever cared about in your life and make you watch while I do things to them that will have you begging me to kill them. That's who I am.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“I’m a complicated man, with complicated taste buds.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“I just have an allergic reaction to lung cancer. Gives me tumors.”
― Barry Lyga, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl

“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.”
― Barry Lyga, Boy Toy

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

“Not according to this," Jazz said, taking the report. "No evidence of sexual activity or anything like it."
"Well, there's that," Howie said, sounding relieved. Jazz wondered at that - was it really so much better to be unmolested, but still murdered in a horrible fashion? To die in pain and terror, stripped, left in a field, your fingers cut off? But as long as you weren't raped, well, that was alright, then? Did it really matter at that point?”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“If I think she' hot and it turns out she's a psychopath, then what does that say about me? I'm totally not ready for that kind of therapy.”
― Barry Lyga, Game

“Pain means you're alive. Pain is good. Pain is life.”
― Barry Lyga, Blood of My Blood

“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 'type.'"
Gramma: "Did you hear that? Your daddy's a superhero!”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers - Free Preview (The First 10 Chapters): with Bonus Prequel Short Story "Career Day"

“She screamed. Her screaming was beautiful. But, truth be told he missed the crying.”
― Barry Lyga, Game

“Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“What's it like to go looking for your soul, only to learn you never had one to begin with?”
― Barry Lyga, Blood of My Blood

“They put on fresh gloves and got back to business. Jazz wiped up the blood splatters in the freezer and tossed the tissues in with Howie’s waste. It bothered him that he was leaving evidence behind without some sort of oxygenated bleach, those blood splatters would still show up under Luminol. Of course, the odds of anyone deciding to spray down the morgue freezer and switch on an ultraviolet light were pretty minimal, so it’s not like it was evidence that anyone would ever find or use. Still: Billy Dent’s First Commandment was “Thou shalt not leave evidence.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“Yes,” Howie said solemnly. “I can teach you how to be more ‘street’”.
“For God’s sake…”
“Or is it ‘urban’? I can’t remember. Anyway, I can teach you, grasshopper. Or hip-hopper.”
― Barry Lyga, Game

“Yes, pain meant life. But the symmetric property did not apply; Life did not mean pain.”
― Barry Lyga, Blood of My Blood

“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, I Hunt Killers

“Sometimes I can't tell the difference between living and dead. Sometimes I look at a pretty little girlie and I think to myself, Is she a living, breathing thing? Or is she just a doll? Are those actualy tears she's crying? Are those real creams coming out of her mouth? And it's like a fog in my mind, like I get all confused and frustrated and mixed up, so I start doing things. Start small at first, like maybe with the ears or the lips or the toes. And then move on to the bigger things, and there's blood, so I keeping going and my hands are wet and my mouth is warm and I keep going and then something magical happens, Jasper. It's real magical and special and beautiful. See, they stop moving. They stop struggiling. All the fight just goes away and that's when it's all clear to me: She's dead. And if she's dead, then that means that she used to be alive. So then I know: This was a living one, a real one. And I feel good after that 'cause I figured it out.”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“Special kinda warm,”
― Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers

“Even the lies were true.”
― Barry Lyga, Blood of My Blood