95 Crime Fiction Quotes

Following is our list of crime fiction quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about detective fiction.

Famous Crime Fiction Quotes

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing. — Aaron Eckhart

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity. — Tacitus

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers — Jacques Barzun

Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. — Agatha Christie

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. — Agatha Christie

Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil. — Marquis De Sade

Like Richard Price and the late, great Elmore Leonard, Matt Burgess is one of those cool, quick and funny writers who can turn a seemingly routine crime caper into something special. — Carl Hiaasen

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. — Albert Camus

What clever man has ever needed to commit a crime? Crime is the last resort of political half-wits. — Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. — Stephen King

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue. — Seneca The Elder

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct. — Bill James

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done. — Honore de Balzac

Cops and robbers resemble each other, so there's not a lot to learn in terms of learning the logistics of committing the crime or investigating the crime. — Andre Braugher

Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire. — J. G. Ballard

Short Crime Fiction Quotes

• Every work of art is an uncommitted crime. — Theodor Adorno
• The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty. — Edmund Gosse
• Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity. — John Adams
• I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie). — Connie Willis
• The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction. — Tom Wolfe

Crime Novels Quotes

It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy. — Agatha Christie

I think Melbourne is by far and away the most interesting place in Australia, and I thought if I ever wrote a novel or crime novel of any kind, I had to set it here. — Peter Temple

Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller. — Jo Nesbo

The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers. — James Ellroy

I'm not a big crime reader, but I'm reading Michael Connelly's 'The Reversal.' I'm going back to his novels. I'm also reading Keith Richards' 'Life.' I'm always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late '60s and early '70s and the youth culture becoming an industry. — Jo Nesbo

The English tradition offers the great tapestry novel, where you have the emotional aspect of a detective's personal life, the circumstances of the crime and, most important, the atmosphere of the English countryside that functions as another character. — Elizabeth George

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern. — Ian Rankin

It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel...but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point. — Tod Goldberg

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger. — John Waters

The crime novel has always been my favourite genre. — Sara Paretsky

Detective Fiction Quotes

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. — Alan Moore

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of. — Dashiell Hammett

It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check. — Erle Stanley Gardner

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. — Raymond Chandler

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke

There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. — S. S. Van Dine

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again. — Joseph Wambaugh

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. — Raymond Chandler

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Mystery Novels Quotes

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. — Raymond Chandler

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought. — Jeff Greenfield

If I had a bookstore I would make all the mystery novels hard to find. — Demetri Martin

Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred. — Sherman Alexie

Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog. — Vladimir Nabokov

When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot. — Patricia Highsmith

Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel. — Ayn Rand

Adrianne Harun's dark, mysterious novel is by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere. — Andrea Barrett

People Writing About Crime Fiction

Name	Quotes	Likes
Agatha Christie quotes on writing, love and death	376	2192
Aaron Eckhart quotes on leadership, love and life	59	215
Tacitus quotes on nero, agrippina younger and tiberius	220	1865
Jacques Barzun quotes on education, life and love	108	495
Marquis De Sade	156	2296
Carl Hiaasen quotes on florida	68	185

More Crime Fiction Quotes

Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best. — Linwood Barclay

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English. — Camilla Lackberg

I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library - I'm a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction - so I'll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I'll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast. — Anthony Geary

A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonists taste in music, or were told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for. — Peter Temple

The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for. — Michael Connelly

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries. — Denise Mina

I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid. — James Ellroy

Tony Black is the Tom Waits of Crime Fiction, yes, that good. — Ken Bruen

Delaying and withholding tactics, red herrings, partial and doubtful outcomes are stock in trade for fiction writers, especially crime writers. — Garry Disher

I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted. — Denise Mina

The crime fiction genre offers the writer infinite diversity of theme and treatment. — Stanley Ellin

For those who resist the notion that the mainstream is a genre, we recommend that they browse the shelves of their local bookstore. For if the mainstream is not a genre, then it must necessarily embrace all kinds of writing: romance, adventure, horror, thriller, crime, and, yes, science fiction. — James Patrick Kelly

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention. — Sophie Hannah

In crime fiction, I just don't write the parts that aren't a thriller and it's exactly the same in my TV reporting - I distill the essence of the story until it's only the jewels of the tale - and leave in only the most compelling and exciting parts. — Hank Phillippi Ryan

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach. — Denise Mina

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve. — Denise Mina

They've also asked me now to start on another series that we're gonna do after this Frontier Earth. But it's not science fiction, it's more in the Mystery and Crime division and that's another area I'm very interested in. — Bruce Boxleitner

Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction. — Stanley Bing

I grew up reading crime fiction and, especially in the '80s, women were just there to be saved or screwed. — Karin Slaughter

I read the paper every day. There are certain subjects that will catch my attention. I have an entire file of articles. Of course I make up the story, especially since most criminals are not very smart and fictional crime must be clever. I have to make sure the story I am telling is interesting and realistic. In this book I went on line and found out the manners of codes. I thought it interesting to use them as a jumping off point. — Sue Grafton

For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction. — Marcia Clark

I'm sold as a literary writer in Holland; I'm sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature. — Karin Slaughter

I grew up reading crime fiction mysteries, true crime - a lot of true crime - and it is traditionally a male dominated field from the outside, but from the inside what we know, those of us who read it, is that women buy the most crime fiction, they are by far the biggest readers of true crime, and there's a voracious appetite among women for these stories, and I know I feel it - since I was quite small I wanted to go to those dark places. — Megan Abbott

I was reading Raymond Chandler very much with the feminist eye. In six of his seven novels, it's the woman who presents herself in a sexual way, who is the main bad person. And then you start reading more fiction, whether crime fiction or straight fiction, it's just bad girls trying to make good boys do bad things, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman that thou gavest me made me do it, Adam says to God. — Sara Paretsky

And there are rules for crime fiction. Or if not rules, at least expectations and you have to give the audience what it wants. — Tod Goldberg

Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic. — Elliott Colla

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment." — Richard Dawkins

The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next. — Laura Lippman

Reading Tomato Red-the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon-was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself-of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift. — Megan Abbott

I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters. — Steig Larsson

The most popular American fiction seems to be about successful people who win, and good crime fiction typically does not explore that world. But honestly, if all crime fiction was quality fiction, it would be taken more seriously. — George Pelecanos

When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books. — Michael Connelly

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there. — Daniel Woodrell

One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that. — Kathy Reichs

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that. — Donna Leon

The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower - Stieg Larsson's the exception. And I think we use the environment more. — Camilla Lackberg

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become. — Dan Chaon

You're about to meet a new great dame of crime fiction in Death Was the Other Woman. Linda L. Richards does a stunning job in creating a character with a voice and eye right out of a 1930s L.A. hard-boiled classic: guns and gams, booze and bodies, peepers and perps. Move over, Sam Spade: Kitty Pangborn is on the case. — Linda Fairstein

The mainstream has lost its way. Crime fiction is an objective, realistic genre because it's about the real world, real bodies really being killed by somebody. And this involves the investigator in trying to understand the society that the person lived in. — Michael Dibdin

Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe. — P. D. James

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in Black Mask magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. — Charles Frazier

I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music. — James Ellroy

In Conclusion

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