The Poet Quotes
"The secret of dealing with death was to keep it at arm's length. Don't let it breathe in your face."
"I realized that the other one, Ray St. Louis, had said something to me."
"The death of Theresa Lofton was the kind of murder that gave people pause."
"I realized they were counting on Riley knowing the score as soon as she opened the door."
"I'm always interested in what cops drink. It tells a lot about them."
"Some cops get tired of all the shit that comes down the pipe."
"My brother once told me the theory of the limit."
"Every homicide cop had a limit but the limit was unknown until it was reached."
"I knew the Lofton case had weighed on him but not to the point that he'd want to take his own life."
"I'm his brother. We're twins, for Christ's sake."
"Fuck those cops, he thought. They had their one chance and blew it."
"I should have known" he said angrily out loud.
"No matter what, they must not get to his car."
"He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall."
"Detective Delpy, I can assure you that there are numerous legal precedents that have held that observation of acceptable public nudity... cannot be transcribed as prurient interest."
"Detective, I'm not sure but I think your breath alone might constitute cruel and unusual punishment."
"The more he thought about the episode with the cops, the angrier he became."
"I'm not saying I did it, but if I did, I didn't know taking photos of children at the beach was against the law now."
"I don't know anything about that. But I do have a question. I have to ask, where is the crime?"
"The anger brought the self-pity down on him even heavier."
"If they got to his car, they would open the trunk and get his computer."
"It wasn't a bad place but it was nothing special."
"She looked to be about five to eight years younger than Sweetzer."
"He had another ID in the car and he'd kiss Harold Brisbane good-bye as soon as he got out of custody."
"He knew he had to keep the cops away from the car."
"I watched his face for any sign that he might already believe this. There was nothing. He gave nothing away."
"I wondered how many times he had heard people tell him that smoking would stunt his growth."
"He pulled a steel trash can over from the corner so he could use it for ashes."
"I told the story with every detail because I knew each one of them."
"Each time he kept the cigarette in his mouth, so the smoke curled up and hid his eyes."
"Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave."
"Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, In love with suffering."
"I am the perpetrator. The Eidolon. True identity is pain. My pain."
"He knew how selfish it was, how grotesquely warped it was."
"In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed."
"He tried to do the good thing and now he's lost his job, his career, his livelihood."
"They'll never find two guys that were as good as Bledsoe and McCafferty."
"I've always believed that beautiful women know and understand they are always being watched."
"My brother and me, we were twins. I've always heard that longtime partners, especially on homicide, became like brothers. Like twins."
"The fever called living is conquered at last."
"I didn't break into anything and I didn't steal anything. What this is is harassment."
"When the system doesn't work, it always seems to be a case like this, where somebody innocent pays the price."
"It's your case. Hang in there. But don't trust the G, Jack. They'll use you and what you got and then leave you on the sidewalk like dog shit."
"You are a reporter, Jack. Are you going to tell me you were just going to open your files and share with me?"
"You might've known him. You signed the VICAP survey and the profile he got from the bureau on his case."
"I knew I had strayed beyond the bounds of routine conversation."
"I think it has everything to do with what I am and what I'm doing."
"This is more satisfying. I've probably had more firsthand experience with sociopaths than most shrinks have in a lifetime."
"She wasn't as sharp around the edges. She was a listener, not a teller, a thinker, not a reactor."
"My mother left when I was young. I haven't seen her in a long time."
"The interviews were informal, usually in a lawyer room."
"They only thought in terms of help coming to save me, not that I might be able to defend myself."
"These people don't get better, Jack, and they don't get rehabbed. They are what they are."
"People change. After the interviews he was in prison another long year before winning his appeal and copping the deal that got him out."
"You are damn right I sympathize. It doesn't mean I condone a single thing he's done or that I wouldn't drop him with a bullet if I got the chance."
"He wanted to tell us his story, whether it was third person or not, and I think he believed that by telling us about himself he would in some way help himself as well as maybe somebody else down the road."
"He was at the same age as the children he later victimized in Tampa. You see, that's the cycle. It's a pattern we often see."
"They become fixated on themselves at the point in their own lives when they were...ruined."
"Gladden knew his sexual appetite was legally, socially and culturally unacceptable. He was clearly burdened by this, I think."
"He's the evil seed to all of this, Jack. Make sure you get that across in whatever you write about this."
"I know what you're saying. I have to admit I've never made love with anybody thirty-six hours after the first time I'd ever seen him in my life."
"The only time there's been trouble is when I've been lied to or kept out of the investigation, which, by the way, I started."
"He made the play. I finished it. Rules of the game."
"I'll tell why if you want me to. It's always the most interesting question."
"This isn't an interview. And if it is, no fucking comment."
"I think at that point he felt the futility of the situation."
"From becoming like me. Look at me! From becoming like me!"
"I had to kill your brother," he said softly, without looking at me. "I had to do it."
"We're all secure here," he said. "We've got two down and two walking. Come on in."
"This is what it is like," he whispered but no one seemed to hear.
"It looked like he'd burned incense, slopped perfume around to hide the smell."
"It's coming together," he said. "Another one for the studies, I suppose."
"He reached to his chest and looked down at the blood pumping into his hand."
"Barely held on by a few clothespins, it was ready to fly away."
"The real trial had already been held in my heart and the verdict was in."
"It was like a detective bureau during a cop's funeral, and in a way it was."
"I don't have an office. I have a desk and work space."
"The facade was gone. Backus was gone. Now there was only Eidolon."
"She won't call you. Instead, she'll trace the number to the house and she'll go to you, Jack. Alone."
"They were nothing before him and could do nothing now to stop him."