Dexter by Design (Dexter, #4)

by Jeff Lindsay

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?

“I can see them better if they’re not wedged into my eye sockets.”

clichés exist to comfort the feebleminded, not to provide any actual meaning.

Still, nothing worth doing is ever easy—another fascinatingly stupid cliché. After all, breathing is fairly easy, for the most part, and I think many scholars would agree it pays handsome dividends.

“It’s nothing,” I said, “just a flesh wound,” which was something I’d always wanted to say, even though I didn’t really know what that meant. Weren’t ALL wounds flesh wounds, unless they bypassed the flesh somehow and went right to the bone?

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“But the rules are made by people who couldn’t win without ’em. And anyway, killing isn’t always wrong, buddy,” he said, and oddly enough he winked. “Sometimes it’s something you have to do. And sometimes, it’s somebody who deserves it. Because either a whole lot of other people will die if you don’t do it, or maybe it’s, get him before he gets you. And in this case—it’s both, right?”

THE EMERGENCY MEDICS IN MIAMI ARE VERY GOOD, partly because they get so much practice.