Crime Ficiton Quotes

The truth was, she knew why she was upset. She was upset because she could no longer pretend...She could no longer push it to the space at the back of her mind and act as if it did not exist. She realised she had been like a child hiding under the covers to avoid the monsters around her, and that flimsy safety blanket had just been ripped away... ~ Marie McWilliams

How the Hell is it we go to pick up Jenna Jameson and end up with the fucking chick from those Kill Bill movies? ~ Todd Morr

Minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes, they said, were Tipping Points for violent crime. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Statistically, the odds that any given rape was committed by a serial offender are around 90 percent," Lisak said. "The research is clear on this. The foremost issue for police and prosecutors should be that you have a predator out there. By reporting this rape, the victim is giving you an opportunity to put this guy away. If you decline to pursue the case because the victim was drunk, or had a history of promiscuity, or whatever, the offender is almost certainly going to keep raping other women. We need cops and prosecutors who get it that 'nice guys' like Frank are serious criminals. ~ Jon Krakauer

It's ... The only way I can get on with my life is by forgetting what went on before. Dave used to tell me that I didn't have control over what the bastard of my father did to me, and that he'd been punished for it, and I might as well concentrate on the rest of my life, because over that ... I had some control and I could decide what to do. I could change it over; I could become anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough. ~ Olga Nunez Miret

A life might end, but sometimes their case lives forever. ~ Charlie Donlea

Recourse to thick narrative detail reveals that the principal hurdle in the way of a united Pakistan was not disagreement on constitutional matters but the transfer of power from military to civilian hands. More concerned with perpetuating himself in office, Yahya Khan was strikingly nonchalant about the six points. He left that to the West Pakistani politicians, in particular Bhutto, who, contrary to the impression in some quarters, was more of a fall guy for the military junta than a partner in crime. ~ Ayesha Jalal

US intelligence agencies will only use such data to meet specific security requirements: counterintelligence, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, cybersecurity, force protection for our troops and allies, and combating transnational crime, including sanctions evasion. ~ Barack Obama

But he had been the victim of the world's most common crime - his youth had been kidnapped by a thing called time. It had likely also been raped, dismembered, and buried somewhere never to be seen again ~ Aurelio Voltaire

To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available ... in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin. ~ Manly Hall

Virtuosi have been long remarked to have little conscience in their favorite pursuits. A man will steal a rarity who would cut off his hand rather than take the money it is worth. Yet, in fact, the crime is the same. ~ Horace

The law is that you
must live
in the house you have built.
The law is absurd: it is
written down nowhere.
You are uncertain what crime
is, though each life writhing to
elude what it has made
feels like punishment. ~ Frank Bidart

We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such. ~ Ken Bruen

When you go to your local police officer, your police chief in the town you live in, big or small, he will tell you the vast majority of the weapons recovered at a crime scene are either stolen weapons, and/or they have been 'lost' or stolen. ~ Joe Biden

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance. ~ Ogden Nash

Long reflection on the condition of mankind as people
sentenced to death only leads to the justification of crime. Ivan simultaneously hates the death penalty
(describing an execution, he says furiously: "His head fell, in the name of divine grace") and condones
crime, in principle. Every indulgence is allowed the murderer, none is allowed the executioner. This
contradiction, which Sade swallowed with ease, chokes Ivan Karamazov. ~ Albert Camus

Crime, carefully planned and executed, is demonstrably the royal high road to pecuniary success in the United States. ~ Ferdinand Lundberg

Rose West was starting 10 life sentences with no prospect of ever being released, Fred West had gone to hell, I had got my life back and the media circus had moved on to the next big scoop. ~ Stephen Richards

After all, people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such. ~ Terry Pratchett

Her recoil confirmed the disgust Grant felt inside. Who was he kidding, trying to put Vladimir and Andrei behind bars? He was no different from his father. Then he remembered Sophie's words.
"You're not like them. You're my McSailor."
A soft touch made him smile, thinking of Bonnie, before he realized it was Innochka's hand stroking his face. The touch of a mobster's girlfriend. He leaped back, still crouched on his feet. ~ Jennifer Lane

She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. ~ Edward Gibbon

Being broke is not a crime, nor is it proof of one's inadequacy as a writer or as a human being. If you go around with an attitude of implicit apology for being temporarily without funds, it's going to do you more harm than good. ~ Lawrence Block

Many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was in my early 20s, my dream was to write mystery novels. I wanted to do what my favourite crime writer, Ross Macdonald, did - crank out a book a year. The only problem - and it was a considerable one - was that I stank. ~ Linwood Barclay

Though a good cop, Luc Claudel has the patience of a firecracker, the sensitivity of Vlad the Impaler, and a persistent skepticism as to the value of forensic anthropology.
Snappy dresser, though. ~ Kathy Reichs

The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime. ~ John Ashcroft

This congregation of displaced persons had been brought together at a moment in time, in this room, by a few irrevocable mistakes of the past - those acts of rage, greed, lust, and revenge that ran like silent films in their heads, the actors driven by emotions that had gone cold and were now inexplicable. ~ V.S. Kemanis

Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences of violence unremedied. ~ Miroslav Volf

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals. Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by and by you will be proof against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. This is the only way. ~ Mark Twain

Blackmail. The age-old path to the land of milk and honey. The one sure way of being paid for doing nothing. ~ Ursula Curtiss

I used to want to be a cop for a brief time, a detective, solving crimes and upholding the law, ever since I stated watching crime shows in junior high. But being a cop, contrary to what many believe, isn't like the films or television shows that we see every day. If you're the cop who has to have the grim duty of telling a parent that their child was killed, or who loses their friend on a dangerous case, or who has to interview victims of horrible crimes, somehow I imagine that you just want to quit forever on some days. ~ Rebecca McNutt

She had no taste for the psychological, and nothing but scorn for the erotic. What she loved was a story which began with crime and ended with a detection - a story which kept you wondering who did it, how it was done, and when the doing was going to be laid bare to the light of day. ~ The Middle of Things ~ J.S. Fletcher

And who are the greater criminals-those who sell the instruments of death, or those who buy them and use them? ~ Robert E. Sherwood

Murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of law-abiding citizens. ~ Emmanuel Teney

How many innocent victims of hate crime does it take before it becomes wrong?

For us, one is already too many. For them, a thousand is not enough. ~ Christina Engela

That we could live in a country with no rules for the rich, no rights for the poor, and no middle class to speak of, is wrong; it's a crime against the next generation and we've got to do something about it. ~ Van Jones

At best-which is to say, even where our knowledge of a case comes to us only through courtroom evidence-it is difficult for the legal process to keep us at a sanitizing distance from crimes of passion. ~ Diana Trilling

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users. ~ Ralph Nader

He confesses his crime who flees the tribunal. ~ Publilius Syrus