The truth is I did try to stab him. I tried to stab him with a butter knife. Why? Because it seemed deadlier than trying to stab him with a melting stick of butter.

What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child

There are not so many murders in this township, I think to myself, and not so few policemen, that a killing should be treated like an old woman who has lost her cat.

I wish I could find MY books listed on GOODREADS - DODGING JOE, THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T EXPLAIN, THE BITTER GRAPES - ll available through Amazon and Createspace -

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled.

It'd be great to be so famous that if I murder someone, I will never, ever, ever serve any jail time, even if it's totally obvious to everyone that I did it.

Now I recall my emotions at that moment, children seem to me a remarkable race. They want so much to murder so many people, and they so rarely murder anybody at all.

He had also learned that there is no use murdering people; there are always so many left, and if you tried to murder them all you would never get anything else done.

Actions have consequences. Kids today don’t think about that. It’s like, ‘Hey, wouldn’t this be awesome?!’ Consequences? What are those?

When silence greeted her question, she looked at Caine—for that was how he saw himself in that moment and in all the moments after: his brother’s murderer.

You’re sure you didn’t leave? Didn’t try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don’t know, dismember some poor jogger?

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.

If I had a face like a clown mask, I’d be concerned people would see my face, associate me with a bank robbery, and then I’d be forced to kill them.


Justice might well prevail in the end, but ordinary people like me had no guarantee of surviving that long. We might get killed on the whim of some serial killer first.

In March of that year, I saw a man named Paul Barkley shot to death. It happened late at night in the parking lot of a café in Santa Rosa called Galileo’s.