It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. — Agatha Christie
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. — Raymond Chandler
Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one! — Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity. — John Adams
I learned everything I know about plot from Dame Agatha (Christie). — Connie Willis
I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing. — Aaron Eckhart
The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty. — Edmund Gosse
We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes. — A. A. Gill
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers — Jacques Barzun
The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. — Frederik Pohl
Fiction is the truth inside the lie. — Stephen King
Nothing matters but the facts. Without them, the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game. — Blake Edwards
Mystery is an intellectual process... But suspense is essentially an emotional process. — Alfred Hitchcock
If I had a bookstore I would make all the mystery novels hard to find. — Demetri Martin
It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot — Agatha Christie
Detective Stories Quotes
Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid — Raymond Chandler
We're living in an upside-down era. Regulators detect danger only when a critical mass of citizens has become alarmed. Newsrooms report stories only when the embarrassment of not reporting them becomes unbearable. Universities teach lessons screened by students. It won't end well. — Bret Weinstein
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid. — Arthur Conan Doyle
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
I made the key discovery for CRISPR there, while living in my scientific monastery in northern Sweden. At the same time, I was very interested in detective stories, searching for enigmas. — Emmanuelle Charpentier
It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check. — Erle Stanley Gardner
Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight. — Dashiell Hammett
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form. — Chester Himes
What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order. — P. D. James
Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories. — Jeffery Deaver
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
Detective Quotes
Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. — Frantz Fanon
I can smell bullshit from a mile away but it's so much harder to detect when it's around you all day. — Dane Cook
Breast cancer deaths in America have been declining for more than a decade. Much of that success is due to early detection and better treatments for women. I strongly encourage women to get a mammogram. — Larry Craig
The universe wrote fiction is us. Its called Fear.
History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done. — Sydney J. Harris
In 'whichever direction' you may turn your gaze you will find One Eternal Indivisible Being manifested. Yet, it is not at all easy to detect this Presence, because He interpenetrates everything. — Anandamayi Ma
If the origin of life is the origin of evolution & nothing comes before life then we are indeed stuck. I don’t think we need to be. Let’s shed the dogma, ego, & closed minds & ask the question clearly. How do we detect the onset of evolution BEFORE biology? — Lee Cronin
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
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect. — Mark Twain
Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment. — Og Mandino
Even many of the things that we say we have seen, we’ve actually just seen instruments detect those things. We’re watching the effects through instruments and then theorizing that there are other universes out there where the photons are interacting with the photons that we can see. — Naval Ravikant
Detective Work Quotes
I know when I was here prosecuting homicides in the District of Columbia, one of the most effective units here was the cold case squad, which had on it FBI agents, as well as Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives working together. — Robert Mueller
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. — Henry David Thoreau
They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work. — Arthur Conan Doyle
Anything is easy to the man who sees.... The open eye of the open mind--that has more to do with real detective work than all the deduction and induction and analysis ever devised. — Samuel Hopkins Adams
Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'. — Bram Cohen
You just work really hard and scrutinize. What is it called in politics? "Opposition research"? You want to do the detective work on your client so to speak before your opponent can dig it up. We're vetting everything thoroughly. — James Ponsoldt
When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again. — Mary Lee Settle
Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information. — Roger Wicker
Chuckling to herself, Nancy said aloud, "Romance and detective work won't mix tonight! — Carolyn Keene
So, I got into the law enforcement game. I worked for an outfit called Newton Detective Agency for a while. I worked eight hours on the waterfront making sure the longshoremen didn't take too many things. — Clint Walker
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
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
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
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
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
Mystery Novels Quotes
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
Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred. — Sherman Alexie
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
One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero. — Carolyn Wheat
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away — Anne Tyler
To a man who is uncorrupt and properly constituted, woman always remains something of a mystery and a romance. He never interprets her quite literally. She, on her part, is always striving to remain a poem, and is never weary of bringing out new editions of herself in novel bindings. — James Parton
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
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
The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice. — Michael Connelly
I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of. — Dashiell Hammett
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
I am talking about the general psychological health
of the species, man. He needs the existence of
mysteries. Not their solution. — John Fowles
One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke
Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction. — Stanley Bing
The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or all those other things that people tend to attach to many fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job, in a very interesting time. — Rowan Atkinson
I think that is one of the things that is beautiful about fiction and that you can do through drama. If I was a detective, I could make a certain version of everything we know to be exactly true. And that would have a certain kind of truth value. And there are certain other things that we know that are emotionally true. — Liza Johnson
My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise. — Sue Grafton
Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard. — Thomas Jane
Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
The only place success comes before work is a dictionary
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke
Detective fiction could not have existed without Edgar Allan Poe. — Giles Foden
Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre. — Tyler Cowen
If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days. — Albert Brooks
It is more important to detect corruption than fiction. — Charlotte Lennox
I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art. — W. H. Auden
It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all. — Patti Smith
In Conclusion
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