3 Quotes by Bernard Lefkowitz

But these Glen Ridge kids, they were pure gold, every mother’s dream, every father’s pride. They were not only Glen Ridge’s finest, but in their perfection, they belonged to all of us. They were Our Guys.

That’s what interested me: their characters. I wanted to know what they had acquired from the world around them and how their formative experiences found expression in a dimly lighted basement in Glen Ridge. What was it in their upbringing as children and adolescents, so seemingly comfortable and secure, that inclined them to take pleasure in the conscious degradation of a helpless woman?

As Leslie began to fill in the picture, adding images and details to the flat sentences in the police reports, she was also bringing something more: her personality and the limits of her understanding. She has always wanted to be liked, especially by the popular athletes, and what happened in the basement hadn’t changed that.