Under the Bridge Quotes

“Wherever I may be, peace will be by my side. The tears I so often cried / Will all have dried / Bringing me rays of sunshine and happiness / To fill my life with warmth / And serenity / No longer scorned by the evil of others / A road of my own that I will travel / No hills, no curves, and no gravel. Giving a clear, open way to where I belong / Showing me love and how to be strong.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Tell these girls in here to stop messing with me,” Kelly ordered, as if he was her personal bodyguard. “Tell them I know karate.” He held back a laugh and opened the door with a key attached to the chain on his hip. “Take a good look at the company you’re in,” he said to her, without sarcasm or irony.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Newspapers and television news were banned suddenly. This censorship increased the interest in the arrival of the new girls, and it took only hours for rumors to move through the hallways and classrooms.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Now, as the Russian sisters hesitated by the Oak Bay police station, Suman went into her daughter’s room and sat on the bed by her daughter’s teddy bears. She held a cup of tea with cumin and fennel and yet she could not warm herself or settle the unease. “I just knew she was dead,” Suman recalls, “but I didn’t want to say it out loud. I knew she was lying somewhere dead, but I thought she must have been in an accident. I never thought she was murdered. Murder never entered my mind.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“The Russian sisters were not fond of cops, and both girls had lived in ways that Josephine and Dusty may have dreamed about in their fantasies of being tough and outlaw. The two sisters were, as their many probation officers and social workers could attest, “street smart,” and yet this did not mean that they were lacking either bravery or morality.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Nadja turned away from Josephine, turned so her body lay closer to the forests and the moon. Nonetheless, Josephine went on with her story, indiscreetly and carelessly. She did not even know Nadja and must have assumed the girl was like the others in View Royal, who had listened to her story and been both skeptical and unconcerned. Nadja, in her worn white T-shirt, with her slightly slanting green eyes and rare Russian surname, was in fact very much unlike the others in View Royal, and, thus, Josephine would have been wiser to not boast so callously.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“In 1999, Rebecca Godfrey walked into this story. By that time the involved teens had been so hounded by journalists that they distrusted and were disgusted by them. (There is an almost satiric moment in Under the Bridge when a respected Canadian journalist draws an indignant and absurd parallel between the Columbine killers and a completely innocent girl only tangentially involved with the attack on the fourteen-year-old.)”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“cops come and take you in, just tell them I stole the car.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Had there ever been a person not somewhat moved by the lovely and frightened face of Warren?”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Many of the girls in juvie may have had crushes on him, may even have fallen in love, and Warren may have loved them in return, but he would not, could not, forget about his love of Syreeta Hartley.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“His roommate, like Warren, was attractive and well behaved, and had it not been for the grotesque and terrible nature of their acts, the boys might have been mistaken for the sons of the wellborn, spending time at a boarding school. Warren often wondered how they both could have ended up like this, and he could find no answers, and still, very often, he would contemplate the fate of the boy beside him, the other killer who seemed to be possessed of neither malice nor hate. In March, a girl named Coral arrived, and she fell in love with Warren, and he was not sure what to do because he still loved Syreeta but he was very lonely.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Warren tried hard to please the Crips, selling a little weed on the side and acting the tough badass around Erik and those guys so they would like him. And sometimes he felt like he was living a double life, but not a false life, since the innocent schoolboy and the badass were both true and part of him.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Grace adored him; she felt as if she was doing what every woman and girl wanted to do when they looked at Warren: save him.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Girls at Shoreline said Rich looked like L.L. Cool J. They called him Richie D., and around that time, Warren began to call himself Warren G. Erik wore his baseball cap just tilted perfectly to the side and also knew every song by Too $hort and was impressed that Warren knew the lyrics so well. Rich and Erik and D’Arcy beat him into the Crips and, after this initiation by pummeling, they said, “You’re part of the family now.” Though older boys in View Royal may have scoffed at Warren G. and “his whole gangster act,” older boys were unaware of the care and attention he brought to his outfits, which were, perhaps, both costume and disguise. He favored white. The color was distinctly his own, and it set him apart from his fellow gangsters, the members of the CMC (Crip Mafia Cartel). For the members of the CMC, blue was mandatory, red forbidden. White was Warren’s personal choice, and an unlikely one, for black may have better created the look of a badass he aspired to. At 5’4 and 115 pounds, Warren was far from a thug, and in fact could not have been cuter and, despite his knowledge of lewd song lyrics and his tempestuous domestic situation, innocent. Never has a boy looked more as if he wandered out of a fairy tale. His eyes were immense, and his eyelashes were long, and his expression was earnest and longing and always, always hopeful. He was possessed of the certain androgynous beauty that appeals so strongly to girls who have not yet turned sixteen. Like heartthrobs of past and present (that year it was Leonardo DiCaprio), Warren G. appeared neither manly nor mean, and in fact, his soft beauty suggested he might really need to be saved.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“tall and pretty girl with curls down to her shoulders told him, “I’ll show you the ropes.” She told him he was such a little cutie.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“All summer, he saw violence and parties. There were fights at the parties, and parties at the fights. “I was too young to be in that scene,” he admitted, and his only good memory was of an older pretty neighborhood girl who pinched his cheek and called him “little cutie.” Otherwise he learned of neither art nor philosophy, and only of how it felt to be an outcast, which to him meant, “I didn’t feel comfortable. I didn’t feel right.” There were bonfires in the gravel pits and he got high, and stared at the flames and the dust.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Some of the girls had been stunningly beautiful, with soft hair and softer skin; some had been burly and rude, with heavy bodies and rough eyes. But they’d spoken of broken arms and whispers and lurings and blood in the water.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“In Nanaimo, at the age of fourteen, Warren discovered on his own: acid, how to drive, the collected works of Too Short. Clara, an older neighborhood girl, taken, as the girls often were and might always be, by the sight of Warren’s large eyes and hopeful smile, introduced him to gangster rap, while Laura gave him his first tab of acid one night when they sat on the steps of the Silver City Theater. Clara would pinch his cheeks and tell him how cute he was, and he’d blush but enjoy the affection because he knew it so rarely.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Though he’d never traveled outside Canada, Warren knew a few things about California. He knew his namesake, Warren G., as well as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, lived in the cities of Long Beach and Compton.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“On Dateline, Josephine wore red lipstick and smoked Newport Lights. Like a noir femme fatale, she was nonchalant and sanguine.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Warren saw, on the pale blue envelope, a name in a familiar girlish scrawl, two words in the top left corner, two words that still caused his heart to catch and rise like a tuned guitar string: Syreeta Hartley.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk

“Warren walked off then, with only this stern warning: “If Syreeta asks you about the blood on my pants, tell her I beat up a Native guy.” He left her then. He left her “without even saying goodbye.”
― Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk