"I'm an outcast. Nobody will talk to me. It's just like The Scarlet Letter, the only difference being that my isolation is due to narrow-minded people refusing to think as individuals condemning an innocent without having accurate information. In The Scarlet Letter, the woman is shunned because she is a harlot. She deserved what she got. I think she came onto a priest or something."

"For my money, it was hard to be excited about libraries until they started checking out movies. I can't wait until the switch-over is complete. What better way to show the obsoleteness of a book than by setting it next to a DVD? I'm glad libraries are leading the charge against books."

"Our heels are dug in, and we are not going anywhere until the state can explain to us financially why we should leave, which we won't, ever! We would just like to hear their offer."

"I don't ask them questions and they don't ask me things like "What college did you go to?" ir "Why don't you display your license on the side of the van?" or "Are these tools clean?""

"Me: What are your plans after the book is published?"

"But my policy is never to turn a customer away. Some doctors might tell their client, "What you're asking me to do might be dangerous to your health," or "If this leaks inside your breast it's going to cause major problems," but I don't say those things. I'm not here to judge."

"Me: That's it! This interview is definitely over! I'm not going to be ambushed by somebody who I happen to know has a few skeletons of his own in his closet, and they are wearing some pretty dirty laundry."

"I remember not far back, I got some dogs to take care of and some chickens to take care of and the dogs killed my chickens, so I got rid of the dogs and got some more chickens, and wouldn't you know it? I killed the chickens. I guess I judged those dogs pretty harshly."

"And Wigfield is small. It's so small that we have to go to the post office for a haircut, and they always lose it."

"I guess I've got my pet theories about who [the Wigfield Maniac is], but in each one, the finger always points back to me, so I tend to keep them to myself. Maybe I committed the murders so I'd have something to write about. See what I mean?"

"I love Wigfield. It reminds me of the quaint little town in Pakistan called Gujurat, where I spent much of my early career. Like Wigfield, they understood the value of human life. So very few people are willing to put a price on it."

"My plan was simple. Stay calm and stay in control of what was becoming an increasingly dangerous situation. In order to implement my plan, I launched into phase one: begging for my life."

"Most people think witches are a coven of lesbians dancing naked in the forest celebrating the semen stolen from imprisoned hypnotized males, which they then use to inseminate one another using turkey basters in order to create a legion of demon babies. Well, that's only part of it. We are also active in community outreach programs."

"I searched frantically for someone, anyone who could translate it for me, but everywhere I looked were just mirrors in which my own hideous laughing face was reflected. I cried, "How will I ever finish this book?" And then I knew the terrifying answer. I would have to write it."

"Sometimes this place is like Old Salem, hunting for witches because of ignorance. If only they'd reach out and try to understand what we're about, we wouldn't feel compelled to place curses on them."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's you can't un-fry things."

"The philosophies behind witch and a wiccan are totally different. A wiccan wears ceremonial black robes and invites her body to be inhabited by an evil spirit that commands her to perform tasks of mayhem and destruction. A witch, on the other hand, can wear anything she wants."

"The fact is, I'm just a small-town businessmayor, what can I do?"

"As I'm sure you can tell by my body adornment, I am an Artist of Doom. Cast your gaze into my bicep if you dare, there you will find a tattoo of chaos and destruction. Go ahead, if you wish to stare into the lair of oblivion. But beware: Once ensnared, there is no escape from my upper arm."

"My brain had shut down and the only way to revitalize it was to get some serious R&R, and by R&R I meant, of course, T&A."

"When I first heard about the dam being torn down I was on a three-day X freak-out, so I was mostly just amused. Three days later I was pretty tired and after that I was unconscious, but now I'm just taking it one day at a time, you know, just trying to figure out what I was saying. What was the question?"

"[Rabbits] are industrious, they are dedicated, and they are delicious!"

"You don't own me motherfucker."

"It's a funny thing about Shell Knob state confineatentuary, when you look out into the yard, you see so many of the ladies from Wigfield, you would swear you were at one of the town picnics! I suppose the only difference is, in Wigfield, we don't have armed guards on top of our electrified fences..."

"We have a strong sense of tradition here in Wigfield. We're one of the only towns that still celebrates V-J Day. For you young 'uns, that stands for victory over the Japanese! It's a joyous celebration. It's a time when the town comes together and remembers how many gave away their lives to nobly advance the cause of liberty, but mostly it's a good way to get together to remember how much we hate the Japanese. We hate Koreans, too!"

"I could easily describe Wigfield in three words, but I don't know what they would be."

"More than ever the theater is the lifeblood of a community, but it's more than that. It's all the fluids, blood, semen, urine, and saliva. If I don't leave that combination of liquids onstage after a performance, then I know I have dropped the ball and let my audience down."

"And another thing: Naturalistic poses. Frolicking in some moss. Holding a nut. What's the point of that? If you wanted this squirrel to hold a nut, then why did you lock yourself in mortal combat with it? That's why I like to capture the last moment before the animal gives up the ghost. You can almost feel the fear rising off it like a stink. I don't coddle my dead animals."

"One of the things I do [at the morgue] is to make sure all the bodies that come in are dead. Here's my test: I just do things to them that no living human would allow, and if they don't react, then I know they're dead. And if they do react, well, the severity of the test usually makes that moot."

"A hummingbird would gladly peck your eyes out. It would amuse it. It would hover above your eye socket sucking out your eye juice like nectar and throw it back up to its waiting hungry children! I'm not making this stuff up, I'm imagining it."

"Two things became clear after speaking to Lenare Degroat: One, steer clear of Lenare Degroat."

"I've spent every one of my forty-eight years right here in Wigfield, except for the times I've been incarcerated or living elsewhere."

"As I held The History of Wigfield in my hands, fiddling with its well-worn cover, I anticipated the wealth of information it must contain. I excitedly cracked open the cover and the words seemed to leap right off the page and land directly in my book in identical sequence!"

"I'm sure you are who you say you are and that you will represent me in a way befitting the tragic consequences if you don't."

"Now, a lot of people ask me how I acquired so many abandoned cars in such a small community. Well, the answer is simple. It's none of their goddamn business. And I resent the implication that I am murdering people for their cars, if that is indeed what they are implying, which would make perfect sense because, let's face it, how am I getting all these cars? I just want this community to rest assured that there are probably plenty of ways to get around killing people for their cars."

"Surrounding all this was a high barbed-wire fence, inside of which stood a cadre of snarling canines. But following the old adage that a snarling dog never bites, I scaled the fence, dropped to the ground, and enjoyed a brief mauling. I quickly occupied the dog's snapping jaws with my limbs to buy some time until I could figure out what to do with all this pain."

"I'm the great American success story. One day you're livin' out of your car, the next day you're livin' out of your car, and you're the mayor of a town. I practically run this place, and I'm not even fully unpacked."

"Sorry about the dogs. My dad says they only attack in the presence of people."

"Top of my list is to find out who's killing all these people. I have already narrowed down the list of Mr. or Mrs. Murderer or Murderers. The second thing we need to do is establish a profile of the perp. Now, my investigation has show that the victims were killed by a blunt trauma to the back of the head or stabbing or shooting or poisoning or burning or... did I say shooting? This is often followed by dismemberment. Or preceded. It's really hard to tell after a while. But clearly this is a person who is a local and familiar to everyone or a stranger just passing through whose movements remain a mystery."

"I like being a lawyer. It makes me proud. I have a briefcase. I keep my fudge in there."

"And of course there're those stories about the Wigfield Maniac, how thre's a madman in town, but I don't believe it's real. I think somebody is killing folks just to scare people."

"I came to this town to represent the lead dispersal plant. The government wanted to close it because they said it was retarding the employees. So they closed it. I got a court order that allowed me to stay at the plant so I could disprove firsthand the effects of the plant. I like watches; they're shiny."

"I begin to search my dresser for clothes until I realize I left them hanging on my body."

"Think about it: I haven't."

"I keep a diary. I been keepin' a diary since I was fourteen years old. Writing in a diary is like a muscle, you have to do it every day or you could easily pull it. Even if I don't have anything to say, I write: "Dear diary, I don't have anything to say today, maybe tomorrow." Sometimes I get tired of writing the same thing, so instead I might write, "Dear diary, nothing coming today, I'll see you tomorrow.""

"Yes, I occasionally start fires when I'm out at a social event, but so what? Who doesn't? It's a free country. I have complete control over my desire to unleash the flickering golden god."

"I have a simple philosophy: KOKO! Which stands for Keep On Keepin' On. You know? Keep on living, even if it kills you."

"It turns out it's pretty hard to exercise your right to vote when you're on fire."