Barry Lyga Quotes

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. Hell, when you're a kid you've got all the energy and all the free time in the world. You'll never have the chance to devote more to love ever again in your life.

Billy always survived. Like a cockroach. The world's smartest, meanest, craziest cockroach.

Pain means you're alive. Pain is good. Pain is life.

This is why I forgive, but I don't forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn't mean anything anymore.

Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.

Once he gets inside your head, you're dead.

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?

I was going to bake you a cake with a hacksaw in it," he said without preamble, " but-"
"But you realized it wouldn't work."
"Well, no. I realized I don't know how to bake.

But there's a restraining order in place.' She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. 'I'm not supposed to be this close to you.' You were never supposed to be this close to me,' I say, and I have no idea why.

Your words hurt, Jazz. They hurt like cotton balls thrown in my direction.

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?

He turns to the Council. 'Sounds like Foolish behavior to me, boys. I hereby nominate the human race for membership in the Council of Fools!' He raises both arms and shouts to the sky. 'Humanity! Join us! Join your masters! All opposed, say nay!
And then nothing but silence and Flip's panting as he strains, listening.
'There are no dissenting votes!' he cries. 'I hereby admit humanity to the Council of Fools!' He punches the air in triumph. 'Dude,' he says, grinning, 'I just upped our membership by six billion. Not bad, huh?

Don't crap where you eat

We humans have the capacity to wreak horrors on each other. But we also have the capacity to survive those horrors.

No matter what his birth certificate said or didn't say, he was Billy Dent's son.

You can never completely escape your DNA.

I'm strong thanks to you, Kyra. You're my strength. And who the hell was she to put that burden on me? I was her strength? Then what did that mean as the cancer ate her from the inside out? What did that mean as she got weaker and weaker and weaker? When the cancer migrated her brain and made her forget things and space out randomly?
You can't rely on other people to be your strength.
You have to be your own strength.

I suddenly realize that I'm naked, which shouldn't bother me since it's the phone, but for some reason it does.
"How's it hanging?" Kyra asks and now I think I'm blushing. It's just an expression, but jeez!

A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.

And it's true. It's so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve ... I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask.
But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

And what? Accidentally cuts off three fingers postmortem? 'Oops, oh, no, my girlfriend just died! Clumsy me, in trying to perform CPR, I chopped off some fingers! Guess I'll just take them with me ... Oh, darn, where did that middle finger go?

Yes, pain meant life. But the symmetric property did not apply; Life did not mean pain.

Billy Dent stared in the mirror. He didn't quite recognize himself, but that was nothing new. Billy had almost always seen a stranger in mirrors, ever since childhood. At first he had hated and feared the figure that seemed to pursue him everywhere, stalking him through mirrors and store windows. But eventually Billy came to understand that what he saw in the mirror was what other people saw when they looked at him.
Other people somehow did not see the real Billy. They saw something that looked like them. Something that looked human and mortal. Something that looked like a prospect.

That last voice in his head.
It hadn't been Billy's.
It was his own.

At least he took the rest of the food I brought him. A growing boy fighting his insane father to the death has to keep the calorie count up there. Fighting to the death is sweaty work.

According to the report, Jane Doe stood no more than five foot one - when standing was still possible. A killer's dream victim. You couldn't custom-order one better.

She knew all about the cops and their trigger fingers and their predilection for dealing with those who would attack their brethren. Her father had drummed such stories into her from a young age; more so into Whiz, who bore the burden of being a black boy about to grow into a black teen. "If the police even look at you funny," Dad had said, "you hit the ground and put your hands over your head. Don't talk back. Don't try to run. Don't try to explain. They're just looking for an excuse to shoot you. Don't give it to them.

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.

Dr. Kennedy talked me out of killing myself
for now
without saying a single words or even knowing what was going on. Which, I've decided, is the mark of a totally kick-ass therapist.

Him jump a little inside whenever they roamed his way. Her hair - off-limits to touch, but not to his other senses - entranced him, jet black, shoulder-length, tightly coiled like powerful springs, smelling slightly of chemicals and cinnamon, the beads at the end of each braid clicking together as she walked.

You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital. That's just from movies and TV shows and stuff like that. You didn't really try to kill yourself. you just wanted attention, but you screwed up. Try harder next time.

My heart went into triple time, like that burst you get when you realize the ball is going over the heads of all the outfielders.

But it's high school. It's not real love, or at least you can't be sure it's real love. Real love is messy and complicated and brutal. It's been tested. Zik and Michelle have never been tested by anything mroe than being separated by a couple of classes.

You know how that goes, G. William," Jazz said lightly. "If you outlaw police scanners, only outlaws will have police scanners.

Women always cried. It was their last, best weapon. It made boyfriends apologize and husbands fold them in their arms. It made Daddy spend the extra money on the prom dress.

Fate comes in and sweeps us all like a big broom, you hear? And the dust goes flyin' and it lands where it lands, and we get no say in the matter.

At the end of the day, it's a series of individual challenges played out against a team defense. It's a psersonal test every time I step into the batter's box: Can I do better than the last time? And that's why I love it.

Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.

For his part, Jazz knew he was handsome. It had nothing to do with looking in the mirror, which he rarely did. It had everything to do with the way the girls at school looked at him, the way they became satellites when he walked by, their orbits contorted by his own mysterious gravity. If attention could be measured like the Doppler effect, girls would show a massive blue shift in his presence. In the last year or so, he had even remarked the scrutiny of older women - teachers, cashiers at stores, the woman who delivered UPS packages to his house. What had once been a maternal flavor in their glances had taken on a lingering, cool sort of appraisal. He could almost hear them thinking, Not yet. But soon.
Despite his upbringing, despite the infamy of his father, they still watched him. Or maybe because of it. Maybe Howie was right about bad boys.

I just have an allergic reaction to lung cancer. Gives me tumors.

Thanks to the very best in Microsoft/Intel engineering, it crashes every time you exhale too hard in its general vicinity.
Fanboy on his computer

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.

Yeah. No matter what Coach does or doesn't do. Because ... I'm going on my terms. Even if by some miracle he recommends me for the scholarship, I'm not taking it."
That surprises her. "I don't get it."
"That's why I had no choice but to let that pitch go by. I had to prove to myself that I could live without baseball. I can't go to college on their terms. I can't be the ballplayer first and the student second, and if they're giving me an athletic scholarship, believe me - that's what it would be. Athlete-scholar, not the other way around. No one can convince me otherwise.
"So, yeah. I'll have to take out student loans. I'll have to work my ass off. But that's OK.

He realized he'd spent his life trying to understand Billy. But had never really understood himself.

Maybe Rachel was right all along. Maybe the past is past, history is history, and you just push it aside and look for the future.

That you I feel up in my brain, trying to rummage around inside my head, rearrange the furniture? I don't think that'll work. I taught you everything you know, but not everything I know.

Violence suits you.

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.

Luck, though, as Billy had said it so many times, was like lightning
it struck sinners and saints in equal measure, and it did to on its time-table, not yours.

He had to do it in secret. He didn't want people to think he was buying forgiveness or understanding. Those two things should not be for sale, at any price.

Love makes you weak. This I know for sure.
Mom loved Roger. Roger loved Mom.And look what happpened there. She died. She thought her love made her strong. She kept telling me-after she was diagnosed-she ket telling me, I'm going to beat this Kyra. I'm going to come out of it. I love you and I love your father and that love is my strength. You're my strength.

We all do stupid things, Conscience. If they don't kill us, they weren't stupid enough, I guess.

I won't let myself be used or manipulated. I won't let myself be a hypocrite.
I am foe me.
I am not weak.
For anyone.

Ginny Davis - poor, dead Ginny - had lent Connie a set of yoga DVDs that looked like they'd come from the ancient 1990s.

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.

He fucked my wife!" George wailed. "He ruined my life!"

"Your wife was a goddamn whore!

For a fat guy, G. William sure could sustain a long burst of screaming and yelling.

And I think of nothing.
I think of nothing but Rachel.
What happens next is pure magic, and is for us and us alone.

Kevin: 'Hey, Dad. How do you stop people from being stupid?'
Dad: 'You don't.'
Kevin: 'Really?'
Dad: 'I've tried to explain to people when they're being stupid, but then I realized something: Most people like being stupid.'
Kevin: 'I don't get it.'
Dad: 'Some people just prefer it. It makes their lives easier if they let other people think for them.'
Kevin: 'But that doesn't make sense. That's just stu ... Oh ...

It just means that if someone hates you, they still have feelings for you. If they really didn't care about you, they'd just forget about you. They wouldn't even waste the time hating you.

She's not buying [the lie], but there's nothing else on the shelves.

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.

Jazz shook his head. "No. The fingers. Your average murderer doesn't mutilate a body like that. And he especially doesn't take trophies. But it's more than that. It's that he left one behind. He left the middle one behind." "Are you serious?" "Yeah. He literally gave the cops the finger. He's saying, 'Come and get me. Catch me if you can.' That's a serial killer." For

She strokes my cheek. "Don't hate yourself, sweetheart. It gets you nothing. It gets you nowhere.

It was like playing checkers, only to learn that your opponent was playing chess all along.

In baseball, when you get into the batter's box, that's it. It's just you. It's one man against the world. All that matters in that moment is your individual achievement and your individual skill. There is literally nothing that anyone else on your team can do for you. Hell, they're all sitting on the bench, waiting to see what happens, just like the fans in the crowd! It's just you and your bat.
And the ball.

It all happened. It wasn't a dream.
And I'm still alive.
I guess that's something.

All I have to do is wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, Jazz. Everything else is optional.

This isn't 'I do something for you, you do something for me'. This is hard-core friendship. Varsity level. This is me asking you to do something for me without getting anything in return. This is friendship, Howie.

Homecoming's stupid. And it is. Buch of kids looking for excuses to grope eachother all night.

[She] was made up of skin and bones and hate and crazy, and hate and crazy don't weigh anything.

Medicine cabinets are dangerous. Those doors, man. They'll just spring on you like a ninja.

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?

What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?
... The term was faith.

Oh, that was smooth. I'm as subtle as a fart.

He didn't dislike New York with the simple diffidence of a small-town kid or the tragic ignorance of a yokel
he hated it with what he hoped was his soul.

Do you think I was wrong to let that pitch go by?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
"You're right."
"Then why did you---"
"Because I didn't know it was wrong until I did it. I had to learn, don't you see? I had to see what would happen when I let my hatred for coach go like that. I had to take control completely, just for once in my life, and see where it led me.

Anger was a waste of time and energy. Anger was useless."Anger" was the label given to the emotion that accomplished nothing.

Unreal. I'm feeling nostalgic for something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago. This has got to be a record.

Jazz hadn't given her many details of exactly what life in the Dent house had been like, but he'd told her enough that she knew it wasn't hearts and flowers. Well, except for the occasional heart cut from a chest. And the kind of flowers you send to funerals.

I'm not sure which is worse--being born to it or learning it.

Jazz closed his eyes.

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.

Jazz opened his eyes.
Conner opened her eyes.
Howie opened his eyes.

Length isn't as important as what you say and how you say it.

(O)ur lives are the sum of our mistakes as well as our triumphs...

You don't swing at any pitch. You swing at the ones you can hit.

Here's the thing about baseball-it's not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter's box like a soldier and it's up to him-and him alone-what happens next.
But here's the thing I didn't understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run ...
Someone else has to pitch the ball.

Somethings are private. And they should stay that way and they get to stay that way. This isn't preschool; I don't have to share.

Special kinda warm,

Here's the thing. Here's the thing I hate: His concern is like a really warm drink when your body is cold, and you feel it go all the way down your throat and then into your stomach, where it pools and spreads out.
But the problem is, that cold is good. Cold is numb. And when you're numb, you can't feel pain. You can't feel pain until some stupid warm drink makes you not numb anymore and then you can feel again.

She screamed. Her screaming was beautiful. But, truth be told he missed the crying.

It was an ugly day.
It was an ugly room.
Except for the body.

And if it's locked, I'll knock it the hell down."
He thinks when he busts out "hell" I take him more seriously. Yeah. Insert eye roll here.

I can't stop you from killing yourself. If that's what you truly want, no one can stop you. I can't be around twenty-four hours a day, looking after you. But if that's what you want, don't you think you owe it to your mother to talk to her first?

Stop what?" Howie demanded. "Stop loving you, Jazz? I wish I could quit you, but I can't. Someday, we'll run off to New York and get married, the way God intended it." Despite himself, Jasper cracked a grin. "Sorry, man my nips only go out about this far." He mimed a quarter inch. "Oh, well, in that case, nice to know ya…

Are you stalking me, Mr. Fulton? The idea both amused and horrified Jazz.

Zik spits into the dirt in from of home plate, his own little ritual. He digs in and grits his teeth, snarling at the Heat. Psychology. Baseball's all about psychology.

Parents get all focused on themselves, and they see their little babies start walkin' and talkin', and since they kinda look like them and sound like the, they start thinking of those little babies as themselves....And then something funny happens. Those babies grow up to be kids and teenages and grown-ups in their own right....so everything the kids do, everything, is a betrayal.

I don't know and I don't care anymore. I was supposed to have my way for once, just once in my life. I did everything right and I got nothing for it.
I want to kill them all. no, better yet, I want to die. No, even bettter than that: I want to kill them all then die.