Best Game Quotes by Barry Lyga

"Bury the memories and the sentiment and move on."

"People are real, Jazz told himself, repeating his mantra. People matter."

"Would that last forever? Or just until the raging flush of teen hormones abated in his bloodstream?"

"Jazz became aware that he was staring at the shovels as they heaved dirt on top of the casket that did not hold his mother’s body, snapping out of it only when Connie poked him to get his attention."

"He trembled from the dream. From what it meant. Or didn’t mean. Or could mean."

"And lying, she realized, is really just acting. And I’m good at acting."

"So what would Jazz do in this situation? Easy: He would manipulate. Which, of course, was a polite word for lie."

"I wish someone would invent a drug that would make the world forget the past and get on with the future."

"My card, Hughes said, believing. In case you change your mind."

"He was constitutionally leery of opening himself to other people, and she didn’t want to frighten him away."

"Remember, you'll always be able to reach me on my cell."

"So this was how Jazz felt. All the time. Every day."

"It's hubris to think otherwise in your case."

"I'm just looking for a killer in New York. And I hear they have good bagels."

"Sometimes she thinks I'm some kind of giant skeleton come to eat her soul."

"It's like grabbin' up blades of grass in the park. One more, one less. Makes no difference."

"Trust me when I tell you that Billy Dent never had a moment’s doubt in his life about what he was and what he was doing."

"Little things can mean nothin' or little things can mean everythin'. And the only one who knows for sure is me. Ain't that special?"

"It probably means he was tired of them kicking and getting blood all over the place while he gutted them. Just making his job easier, is all."

"You can't trust anything you find. Especially the obvious stuff."

"Once you start making assumptions, a guy like this owns you."

"I could live in his head, because that's where I grew up. With that kind of thinking. It was my normal."

"This is why the dove is a bird of peace—because it knows better than to try to be otherwise."

"The guy's crazy, Jazz. It doesn't always have to make sense."

"Ambling along the streets of Brooklyn, no one gave an older dad a second look."

"Facial-recognition software, for some reason, had trouble distinguishing between two faces if one of them was smiling."

"He paused as he groped for the proper phone. Only one person had the numbers to his various phones, and that was just for emergencies."

"Connie handled the cops dragging Jazz away with an aplomb that both surprised and impressed her."

"You could have chosen an easier life for yourself, Conscience Hall, than falling in love with a guy who packs the kind of baggage Jazz packs."

"He hadn’t been a choice—she had fallen desperately in love with Jazz early on."

"In love with the son of the world’s most notorious serial killer? For reals?"

"What kind of girlfriend was she if she couldn’t understand and respect that?"

"He could smell him. Not his deodorant or his shampoo—him. The pure, unadulterated scent of him."

"I love him, Daddy. The simple, unvarnished truth."

"Fairness is for people who don’t lie. Convenience is for people who don’t lie. And trust is sure as hell for people who don’t lie."

"Despite the bundled pedestrians, she could hardly believe it was cold out at all, so warm was the sunlight."

"The alley looked depressingly like it had in the crime-scene photos, as though time had frozen here when winter came."

"But in the end, he couldn’t accept. He just wasn’t sure that she would be able to give him the kind of help he needed."

"The killer sat in his easy chair, the remains of a home-cooked meal on the coffee table before him."

"He had spent much of his life dreaming of this. Dreaming of captive women, compelled to do as he commanded."

"The first time he’d owned a woman, he’d thought it over at that. Thought that with the realization of his dream, he could and would now be like all the others he saw around him."

"But his calm, his repose, did not last. The fantasies returned, first as niggling daydreams, then as all-consuming compulsions."

"Never let it be said your old man doesn’t know how to repay a debt."

"Maybe those guys would have been all over me, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. And you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, either. Not that soon. I wasn’t ready. Not then. Now I am. Any man worth having will wait for his woman to be ready. How can I not return the favor?"

"UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO GO NEAR THE DENT BOY. LEAVE HIM ALONE. YOU ARE NOT TO ENGAGE HIM. JASPER DENT IS OFF-LIMITS."

"But anyway, there’s this stuff buried in you, and you’re afraid it’ll erupt if you have sex. Like, sex is the trigger, right? But Billy never killed any black women. It’s like he just skipped over us. Almost deliberately. Like we don’t exist to him. So I thought maybe that made me safe for you."

"I know what you’re worried about. You’re worried that he somehow, like, programmed you to be a serial killer. And that there’s all this crazy lurking under the surface—"

"It’s a pretty great image, all that lather and soapy bubbles making me slick and shiny."

"You come on a social call, or is this business?"

"Not a goddamn serial killer among 'em! It’s almost like being the sheriff of a small town!"

"You need something so big and important that you called my cell half a dozen times and then scared the poop outta Lana and then barreled in here like you were on fire. Jazz, you’re seriously gonna give yourself a stroke."

"It could be the world’s most incredible coincidence."

"I want nothing more in this world than to believe that. I want to believe that there’s no connection... but I’m not as dumb as I look, which is a hell of a good thing."

"Jasper Dent. Princeling of Murder. Heir to the Croaking."

"Come to learn the truth? It’s not too late. It’s never too late."

"Beautiful, but the way you die is so ugly…! So ugly, Jasper!"

"If anything happens to you, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll poop from the front."

"Your cousins will be tall and handsome and have bigger dicks than you do."

"Be firm. Tell him to leave you alone. Don’t try to hit him or attack him."

"If I kill him, he wins. No, Connie. If I kill him, he’s dead."

"Is this what it’s like inside his head? Is it all mixed up and mashed up? Chaotic? Is that why it makes no sense?"

"No. That’s what he wants me to think. Even if he’s not consciously aware of it. He wants me to think none of this makes sense because if it doesn’t make sense, then I stop trying to figure it out. And then he gets to keep on doing what he wants."

"It’s the most obvious thing in the world to him."

"The guilty guy won’t be able to sleep tonight, so there’s a chance he’ll nod off while waiting for you."

"Hat-Dog is cold-blooded. There’s every chance he got your call and rolled over and slept like a drunk baby."

"When had it become so easy to say 'I love you'? At first, he had stuttered and struggled to say it in person. Now he could toss it out to voice mail. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? It could go either way, he realized."

"It could be that the words passed so effortlessly through his lips because he meant them deeply and truly. Or it could be that he didn’t mean them at all. And that—like all the lies we tell ourselves—it was easy to repeat."

"No one could be hurt if they were apart. And that was good."

"It’s like a reality show, but better because it really is real."

"We can’t stop Billy Dent. Not the two of us. But we can ruin him. We can piss him off and take away the thing he wants more than anything in the world. Can’t we? Can’t we do that?"

"We can take away his dream, Howie. We can keep Jazz from becoming Billy."

"He’s not the guy. He just voluntarily gave you guys his fingerprints and his DNA on that cup. It’s not him."

"Whiz ignored her. He was good at that when he wanted to be."

"But as the day wore on, observers drifted out, replaced by others who watched for a little while, then left again as it became obvious to everyone that the guy in the box wasn’t The Guy."

"Montgomery sighed like a father with newborn triplets who all needed fresh diapers at the same time."

"Being in a serial killer’s mind was like navigating a maze made out of mirrors."

"He could have sworn he heard one of the loaner FBI agents mutter, 'What makes him so special?' to another agent."

"The precinct dropped its pretense of studied, methodical calm and fell right into chaos."

"Curiosity fueled her muscles as she swung the pickax again, trying not to imagine a choking cloud of something noxious and lethal erupting from the open box."

"He’s showing his contempt for us. He knows the investigation is headquartered right down the road. He might have even known we were interviewing suspects."

"Trespassing. Disturbing evidence. Damaging private property… And those were just the crimes Connie could imagine herself. The justice system probably had plenty of other blanks to fill in."

"This is the big one," she said. "This changes things."

"It shows his mom's name," Howie breathed, "but there's nothing for his dad…."

"God, it feels like I've been gone for days," she said. "But it's just been a couple of hours."

"Maybe your moms decided to stick around the mall. Run errands or something while your brother's at the movies."

"I'm not a complete screwup," Howie said, offended. "I can handle my part. Just make sure you send it."

"Already e-mailed. Let me know what happens. And hey—be careful."

"What we need," Jazz decided, "is a DNA sample from that guy."

"People are dying, Connie, and they will continue to die, while you try to play games with me."

"People would notice," Connie said through gritted teeth.

"This isn’t like the game being played in Brooklyn. This is our game, Connie. A game for you and me. Something special, just for us."

"New York's not bad. So, I know why I came. What brings you to the Big Apple? Just playing some kind of game with the Hat-Dog Killer?"

"You got jungle fever, Jasper! You got yourself some dark meat!" He sounded highly amused.

"Don't go lying to me, boy. You ain't so big and so old that I can't whup you with my belt like my old man done to me."

"I gotta admit, after the last time I saw you, I was curious about your love life, son."

"You're so goddamned smart, but even so, you're only about half as smart as you think you are."

"I’m like Speck and Bundy and Dahmer combined. I’m one of the greatest murderers in U.S. history!"

"The only reason for someone else to disguise it—Is if you know the voice already."

"You risked things to bring me here. This is—This is different."

"But are you sure about this? It could be dangerous."