Crime Mystery Quotes

At night in the town's countryside, you could just about feel and hear everything, but without using lamps, it was impossible to see anything other than shadows ~ Peter Fryer

Bite me. -Lieutenant Eve Dallas, from any of the In Death books. ~ J.D. Robb

He sidestepped down the alley and into another one connected to a small garage, where a raccoon with matching black eyes just like his own halted in mid-step next to a trash can.
They stared at each other, not moving or making a sound.
'There there, friend. I am not here to interrupt your nightly activity just as you are not here to interrupt mine.'
They continued their separate ways, who would be caught and who would not remained a mystery. ~ Jackie Sonnenberg

Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it? ~ Michael Connelly

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Every time I think I'm about to seize the moment, it drifts back into the shadows, just beyond my reach. ~ Paula Hawkins

Your mother is holding your hand too tightly. You whimper and cling to her dress, because you know what will happen next. She stares at you, as if she's forgotten how to blink. There's one last glimpse of her face before she bundles you into the cupboard under the stairs. 'Don't make a sound,' she hisses, 'don't even breathe.' Darkness smothers you as the key twists in the lock. There's a chance that he won't find you, cowering on the floor, between the broom and floor mops, a stack of wellington boots. ~ Kate Rhodes

He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company ~ Michael Connelly

I am the prosecutor. I represent the state. I am here to present to you the evidence of a crime. Together you will weigh this evidence. You will deliberate upon it. You will decide if it proves the defendant's guilt. ~ Scott Turow

In a mystery, the sleuth must be believably involved and emotionally invested in solving the crime. ~ Diane Mott Davidson

I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we'd use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertips tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings. ~ Ed Lynskey

What's the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where's the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach ~ Lee Child

The solving of almost every crime mystery depends on something which seems, at first glance, to bear no relation whatever to the original crime. ~ Elsa Barker

Do it once and do it right and do it quickly ~ Lee Child

All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society's institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions. ~ Michael Connelly

It isn't really much of a mystery, this occasional need I have to comfort my father. I did something terrible to his son once. ~ John Darnielle

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think that's why I love to read. I'll read almost anything - mystery, suspense, slice of life - but what I really love is romance. Contemporary is good, Historical is better, Paranormal is the best. ~ S.T. Prussing

What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, "Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh"; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, "Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh." Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." ~ Isaac Newton

Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not. ~ Simone Weil

Sometimes, we miss the truth when it's right in front of us, she thought. Sometimes the closer we are, the harder it is to see. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The worst crime is faking it ~ Kurt Cobain

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it. ~ Emile Durkheim

We are laying the foundation for some new, monstrous civilization. Only now do I realize what price was paid for building the ancient civilizations. The Egyptian pyramids, the temples and Greek statues - what a hideous crime they were! How much blood must have poured on to the Roman roads, the bulwarks, and the city walls. Antiquity - the tremendous concentration camp where the slave was branded on the forehead by his master, and crucified for trying to escape! Antiquity - the conspiracy of the free men against the slaves!
.... If the Germans win the war, what will the world know about us? They will erect huge buildings, highways, factories, soaring monuments. Our hands will be placed under every brick, and our backs will carry the steel rails and the slabs of concrete. They will kill off our families, our sick, our aged. They will murder our children.
And we shall be forgotten, drowned out by the voices of the poets, the jurists, the philosophers, the priests. They will produce their own beauty, virtue, and truth. They will produce religion. ~ Tadeusz Borowski

But I don't doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them will be the same. It's odd, but a criminal gives himself away every time by that. Man is an unoriginal animal," said Hercule Poirot.
"Women," said Mrs. Oliver, " are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running."
"Don't you ever write the same plot twice running?" asked Battle. ~ Agatha Christie

That pistol I gave you is a piece of crap. You can't hit anything with it, not at that distance."
Staring at her with tears in his blinking eyes, he says, "I did."
Conversation between Alis K and Willy
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

Let them write angry letters to the Government-
they haven't been loved enough, there has been some crime ~ Joyce Carol Oates

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open. ~ Edna O'Brien

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery. ~ Ram Dass

Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids. ~ Denise Mina

He's prowling back and forth like a lion with distemper now. There's a shiny streak down one side of his face. "I shouldn't have let her go ahead - I ought to be hung! Something's gone wrong. I can't stand this any more!" he says with a choked sound. "I'm starting now -"

"But how are you -"

"Spring for it and fire as I go if they try to stop me." And then as he barges out, the fat lady waddling solicitously after him, "Stay there; take it if she calls - tell her I'm on the way-"

He plunges straight at the street-door from all the way back in the hall, like a fullback headed for a touchdown. That's the best way. Gun bedded in his pocket, but hand gripping it ready to let fly through lining and all. He slaps the door out of his way without slowing and skitters out along the building, head and shoulders defensively lowered.

It *was* the taxi, you bet. No sound from it, at least not at this distance, just a thin bluish haze slowly spreading out around it that might be gas-fumes if its engine were turning; and at his end a long row of un-colored spurts - of dust and stone-splinters - following him along the wall of the flat he's tearing away from. Each succeeding one a half yard too far behind him, smacking into where he was a second ago. And they never catch up. ("Jane Brown's Body") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Of course, having a culprit, someone to take the brunt of your anger, is an open door, a chance to temporarily escape your suffering. And the more odious the crime, the more ideal the culprit, the more legitimate your hatred. You think about him in order not to think about yourself. You hate him in order not to hate what's left of your life. You rejoice at his death in order not to have to smile at those who remain. ~ Antoine Leiris

Chinatown is tremendously interesting ... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all. ~ S.J. Rozan

Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed. ~ A.J. Quinnell

I think it is in the interest of the people of [Serbia] that no one, not even the government, can get away with the crime, whoever the victim. ~ Michael Kirby

The second beating seemed to me a just and reasonable punishment. To get one beating, and then to get another and far fiercer one on top of it, for being so unwise as to show that the first had not hurt - that was quite natural. The gods are jealous, and when you have good fortune you should conceal it. The other is that I accepted the broken riding crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet - the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sim told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years. ~ George Orwell

The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple. ~ Victor Hugo

After me there are no more jazz singers ... It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever. ~ Betty Carter

Piracy is not so much organized crime as it is a business, characterized by extremely efficient capital flows, low start-up costs, and few entry barriers. ~ Jay Bahadur

Faith leaned closer, inches from his face, her loips a hands breadth from his. She shook her head side to side a bit faster than the average metronome and waggled a finger back and forth. "They not going to find out though, are they?
He stared into merry eyes almost as dark as his coffee. The devil was a woman and Faith one of her most beautiful minions. ~ Chris Karlsen

Of course I didn't want to involve myself in devastating crimes I hadn't done - especially under the present circumstances, where the U.S. government was jumping on every Muslim and trying to pin any crime on him. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Hands fitted into each other's, we would walk
Pausing only for an expresso at Dario's
And a while to lean on the railing of the bridge
To watch the dark mystery of the canal moving upon itself
We would lie in the tall grass and watch fireflies
Dance against the tent of night
Then race madly to catch the last train home
Where we would eat bread and cheese
And drink cheap wine on the table we made from boxes
And life was young, alive and beautiful
Because it was Sunday, and you loved Sundays. ~ David Ellsworth From The Serenity Of Selfism

Few criminals die sensible of their crimes. ~ Norm MacDonald

Believe in yourself, Follow your dreams, and all things are possible! ~ Garry E. Lewis

The world needs more than just itself. Amid the dreariness, people do not need a distraction that will in the end become dreary itself; they are asking for mystery, even if they do not realize this themselves. They need the sign of the wholly Other, the living Word of God, entering into this our age in unadulterated trustworthiness and dynamism. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Standing before him, the blight of idyllic thought and aspiration--rotting souls reproducing like fleas. ~ Glen R. Krisch

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

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime. ~ W.S. Gilbert

He is not stubborn, not narrow-minded, not lazy, not stupid. There was just no easy explanation. So it was left up in the air, a kind of mystery that one gives up on because there is no sense in just going round and round and round looking for an answer that's not there. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. ~ George Gordon Byron

You know what I mean? Real and unreal, beautiful and strange, like a dream. It got me high as a kite, but it didn't last long enough. It ended too soon and left nothing behind."
That's how it is with dreams," said Priscilla. "They're the perfect crime. ~ Tom Robbins

I would say that, in the future, the book will be reserved for things that function best as a book. So, if I need a textbook that's going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you're better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. ~ Art Spiegelman

The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, some manner of surviving nature's fury and our mundane daily needs. ~ Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Just Walking Around"

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is no name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other. ~ John Ashbery

THIS dust was once the Man, / Gentle, plain, just and resolute - under whose cautious hand, / Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, / Was saved the Union of These States. ~ Walt Whitman

I warned you I was no hero."
"You were," she said. "You were once, for me, but not now. You failed to tell me that you weren't just a villain. You're worse." She struggled to hold back her tears. "You're a monster. ~ Kait Ballenger

But we advance into the mystery beyond life only by misunderstanding the living. ~ Michael W. Clune

Don't stay out too late. The real trouble always starts after midnight. ~ Amanda Hocking

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

...high inequality is associated with higher rates of crime, greater risk of stress-related illness, and greater political polarization. ~ Keith Payne

A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime. ~ Sydney Smith

Though the rain had pitter-pattered, then pelted the carriages during the drive had stopped, the ground was wet and boggy, sucking at feet as though hoping to keep anyone from ever leaving the estate. ~ Jessica Lawson

His attitude to physical clues was rather like that of the modern Christian to miracles. They could happen, but probably not just at the moment. ~ Reginald Hill

The worst crime on the part of the revolutionaries would be to give the smallest concessions to the privileges and prejudices of the whites. Whoever gives his little finger to the devil of chauvinism is lost. ~ Leon Trotsky