Dance with the Devil Quotes

“The gap in our souls cannot be filled. The reminders are everywhere. They cannot be switched off.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“No words that I can recall, just primitive despair. No time. No thought. Just feeling. Walsh”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“Our baby must have been a miserable wretch from the strain of trying to disentangle himself from this emotional octopus.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“Kate is an avid reader of fiction and came across a quote from Anthony Trollope’s novel Barchester Towers. I believe it explains why I did not kill Shirley: “A man in the right relies easily on his rectitude and therefore goes about unarmed. His very strength is his weakness. A man in the wrong knows that he must look to his weapons; his very weakness is his strength. The one is never prepared for combat, the other is always ready. Therefore it is that in this world the man that is in the wrong almost invariably conquers the man that is in the right, and invariably despises him.” Responses”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“The “objective” of preventing both the repeat devastation of a second killing, and its ensuing loss of confidence in government, constitutes “concerns which are pressing and substantial in a free and democratic society.” My”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“Many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths…are closely associated with a profound lack of empathy (an inability to construct a mental and emotional ‘facsimile’ of another person)”29—Robert D. Hare from Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us In”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“That’s life. Not the cliché, but literally: living organisms seek the best outcome available in any situation.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“A living organism does the best it can with its given situation. If a root encounters a stone, it grows around it. If a fox can’t find rabbits in one valley, it moves to the next.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“After dinner, we escaped to a movie: The Two Towers, part two of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was a good story, providing the escape we sought, but something more. Near the end of the film, when Frodo feels that the burden of the ring is overwhelming and he simply cannot continue the struggle, Sam tries to convince him to hold on. Frodo asks, “What are we holding onto, Sam?” “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Peace”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“It seems likely that Shirley actually deluded herself into believing that our support for Zachary translated into support for her. Merry”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“We had come to expect the worst, so reality had a harder time breaking through our shell.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“The purpose of an extradition hearing is not to determine the guilt or innocence of the fugitive. It is merely an inquiry to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant sending the fugitive to the demanding State so that he may stand trial…The…extradition judge is not required to weigh the evidence or to decide the credibility of witnesses; his duty is to determine if the evidence would justify the committal of the fugitive for trial if the alleged crime had been committed in Canada. [The fugitive can] point out weaknesses or deficiencies in the evidence of the demanding State…[and] present arguments as to why he should not be extradited [However] the full determination of the fugitive’s rights will take place in the courts of the demanding country. It is a basic assumption of extradition proceedings that the fugitive will receive a fair and just trial in the demanding State. Embedded”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“A courtroom is a war zone where enemies confront each other in a bloodless battle using only the weapons of information, principles, and logic instead of fists, knives, and guns.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“Circumstantial evidence is not, as they [defense counsel] claim, like a chain. You could have a chain spanning the Atlantic Ocean from Nova Scotia to Bordeaux, France, consisting of millions of links, and with one weak link that chain is broken. Circumstantial evidence, to the contrary, is like a rope. And each fact is a strand of that rope. And as the prosecution piles one fact upon another we add strands and we add strength to that rope. If one strand breaks—and I’m not conceding for a moment that any strand has broken in this case—but if one strand does break, the rope is not broken. The strength of the rope is barely diminished. Why? Because there are so many other strands of almost steel-like strength that the rope is still more than strong enough to bind these two defendants to justice. That’s what circumstantial evidence is all about.5”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“They have known us in the bottom of our pit, and we have known them at the peak of their generosity.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“Decent people strive to do good things and hate to see bad things happen anywhere around them. And they most hate bad things to happen in their domain, what they consider their sphere of influence.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“The rest of us turned as one to stare at her, unable to comprehend how the murder of thousands of people could be overshadowed in her mind by the successful arrangement of a routine telephone hookup. Five”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“it doesn’t matter how old you are, how old your child was when he or she died, or the particular manner of your child’s death; the hole in your heart never heals over. You can function in life, but you are doomed to fall far short of that contentment which had once been available to you. Soon”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

“A man in the right relies easily on his rectitude and therefore goes about unarmed. His very strength is his weakness. A man in the wrong knows that he must look to his weapons; his very weakness is his strength. The one is never prepared for combat, the other is always ready. Therefore it is that in this world the man that is in the wrong almost invariably conquers the man that is in the right, and invariably despises him.”
― David Bagby, Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss