Joe Kenda Quotes

Never mind the bullet with your name on it. Beware of the bullet that says “To Whom it May Concern”.

You know what this is, don’t you?” I asked. “Is this what you used on your arm?” She looked at the razor in the bag, then she stared at the floor. The truth spilled out: She discovered, somehow, that she had more intense orgasms if she masturbated while looking at her own blood. “They are very intense,” she said. I don’t get creeped out easily. This came close.

President Theodore Roosevelt once trekked up there and hailed his hike as “the trip that bankrupts the English language.

People behave badly, and this includes even those who you’d think would know better. My wife worked with another RN, an educated person with a good job, who cared for newborns in the hospital nursery. Meanwhile, she left her own child at home in a crib for her entire eight-hour shift. She didn’t want to pay a babysitter. The child survived, no thanks to the mother.

Sometimes parents kill their children with abuse and neglect, sometimes merely with disapproval. I went looking for an eleven-year-old kid who’d gone missing along with his grandfather’s .22 rifle. We found his body not far from the house, on an abandoned railroad track. He’d put the end of the rifle barrel in his mouth and then pulled the trigger with his toe. We interviewed the family and found that he had been a bright kid, a gifted student, whose demanding and domineering father had gone ape-shit crazy on him because he’d come home with a single B on his report card. Every other grade was an A. The father’s response was “How could you do this to me?” Your son made sure it never happened again, now didn’t he? It was the last B the poor kid ever brought home.

UNFIT TO PARENT The right-to-life people talk about bringing all the unwanted babies into the world. Then they go home after their protests, scheduled for their convenience. Police officers are left to deal with the aftermath of their righteous cause. I’d like to see all the unwanted babies brought to the homes of the right-to-life people. We’ll bring you 1,200 babies on Monday. You can feed and nourish them and send them to college. The next week we will bring you 1,200 more. That is the reality of the right-to-life equation. Nobody wants to think about it, but it is the way things are in this world. Unwanted children suffer.

We found the girl’s body and I had to go tell the parents. It was around midnight, but this wasn’t the sort of thing that could wait until morning. I called our contact number for the Catholic diocese in Colorado Springs, looking for a priest to accompany me so he could console this deeply religious family. The priest who answered the phone at the diocese residence said, “We don’t go out at night.” That was it. His team kept banker’s hours. I hung up on the soulless priest and called a good-guy rabbi I’d known for years. I told him that the daughter of a Catholic family had been murdered but I couldn’t get a priest to go with me for the notification. “Why not?” the rabbi asked. “Apparently, they don’t go out at night.” “Bastards,” he said. I had no interest in igniting a holy war, or an unholy war, I just needed someone from the God Squad to be there when I delivered horrible news to these nice people. “Come pick me up, I’ll wing it,” he said. The rabbi wore a yarmulke skullcap but delivered a full round on the rosary in perfect Catholic. He stepped up and had the entire family on their knees praying in front of a Madonna statue in the living room. On the ride home, I told my Jewish friend how impressed I was with his priest impersonation. The rabbi replied: “I keep up with the competition.

Sometimes parents kill their children with abuse and neglect, sometimes merely with disapproval

She was in her dorm room on her bed, naked and cutting herself with the razor blade as she masturbated. She was having one orgasm after another and then suddenly realized she’d gone too far with the cutting. Feeling sick and faint, she was on the edge of passing out while bleeding from her self-inflicted wounds. She threw on a blouse and jeans and went looking for help. Had she remained in her dorm room, she likely would have bled to death.