Young Adult Law Crime Quotes

“I half expected to hear that stupid cackling laugh again, but there was just the fluttering of new leaves blowing in the cooler breeze. The sunken moon sat on the cosmic ledge like a judge sentencing me to doom. In the bright moonlight, I felt the depth of my ineptitude. To throw off my rage at the world, at myself, I picked up a rock and chucked it across the field, and then I went back home.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“I had to keep living as much as I fought against that fact. I quit my job. And I hit the road. I figured I would do nothing but wander, for however long I could manage it, spending a month here and there, wherever. Maybe to relax. Maybe to escape. Maybe to sort through the turmoil within me.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“I imagined there were people out there in the darker shadows, some dragging their feet like the walking dead, some scanning like predators, some cowering like victims. I wanted to absorb it all, suck it down, destroy it—the vision, the scene, the barbarism.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“Driving around town, I found myself staring down older teenagers and college-aged boys and young men. Any sign or signal less than mindful obedience to the law, to orderly conduct and my rage ticked up one notch higher.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“Everyone kept moving along, like no bad thing would ever happen to them; that sort of thing was only on Twitter or the news feeds. They were safe. Nothing would happen to them. Even in the very spot where it had happened, people moved on with their lives. It was either impressive human-spirit stuff or just total, impenetrable ignorance: the belief that death naturally wasn’t a part of their lives.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“My heart beat faster because I didn’t know what I would see or read, and I knew Luke might be in there, and I didn’t want to imagine or to confirm anything bad about him. I scanned the right margin, where all the names or aliases of the room’s members were listed. Weird-looking names, most of which made no sense to me. And then I spotted Fonzie at the bottom.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Did young guys talk like this? For real? I didn’t remember knowing any psychopaths when I was twenty years old. Jesus Christ. Who talked like that? Then I remembered when I was a kid I had watched Faces of Death with the other neighborhood idiots, and I calmed down a bit.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“The same old debate was all over the news within the hour. The headline on the next day’s newspaper read, “KILL EVERYTHING.” This simple phrase was cut from a longer statement posted online from the killers. Kill everything? I thought. Not even kill everyone? Just obliterate everything?”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“That evening, Penny came over with dinner and ended up staying the night. Each of us found comfort in the other, I would say. We didn’t say I love you, but we were very careful with each other. Maybe I loved her. I imagined I did. I imagined she loved me too. ”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“Everything seemed to be falling apart. I had to stop myself and recognize all the good, plain people around me. But it seemed that more and more people were spoiling. And this gut feeling was hard to shake. Just listening to the news, I found myself throwing things across the room, full force—the remote, my work pager, small things I resented.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“I could feel my aged, hard-won masculinity being eroded each millisecond I stayed. It got to the point that only the depths of their vileness gave them any kind of status, and this was both the most pathetic but most dangerous of all. This was the kernel of my intrigue: did this sort of daring morbidity escalate, cross over from virtual to real? And when?”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever

“How could I expect her to understand if I couldn’t explain it? It was not a secret that I struggled with anger at times in my life, and I didn’t want anyone misinterpreting my motives for tracking this kid. I had a gut feeling and nothing more.”
― Jonathan Epps, No Winter Lasts Forever