Crime Noir Quotes

When you're reading a good noir, the shocks and twists have a way of feeling deja vu-like, as if you saw them coming, but hoped the characters would take a left turn ... not answer the phone, not sleep with that woman, not sell drugs to those cops ... but knew they would. It would have been wrong if they didn't, and the real surprise can be that you care about someone you know is in for hell. You relate to them, even when their hell is so much bigger than your own. But we're all going to die, and we all make mistakes.
The best noir stories make you forget plot entirely by giving you characters that feel so well-realised you can't look away as they fall. ~ Ed Brubaker

I open the toilet door and step out, my internal fire re-stoked, ready to face my demons, fight if need be and win. I'm raging, focused like a jungle warrior after his second bowl of tiger-cock soup. ~ John Bowie

I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it. ~ Sara Sheridan

For my money, noir boils down to bleak humanism – or, to put it more plainly: shit options, bad decisions, and dire
consequences. The difference between Greek tragedy and noir ain't the height of the fall, but the reason: those who fall in Greek tragedy do so because they're destined to; those who fall in noir choose to their damn selves.

In short, free will's a bitch.
But regardless of whose definition you go with, you'll notice something's lacking: namely, any mention of genre. That's because for as much as noir's assumed to be a subset of crime fiction, it's more vibe than subgenre. And, as many an enterprising modern writer seems intent on proving, that vibe is one that plays just as well with fantasy and science fiction as it does with crime. ~ Chris Holm

The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction") ~ Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man. ~ James Ellroy

And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.

I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It must, it must be a wrong number, somebody wanted the Information Booth or-! It must have been audible outside, with all I had the slide partly closed. One of the redcaps passing by turned, looked over, then started coming across toward where I was. To get rid of him I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear.

'You'd better come out now, time's up,' a flat, deadly voice said. 'They're calling your train, but you're not getting on that one - or any other.'

'Wh-where are talking from?'

'The next booth to yours,' the voice jeered. 'You forgot the glass inserts only reach halfway down.'

The connection broke and a man's looming figure was shadowing the glass in front of my eyes, before I could even get the receiver back on the hook. I dropped it full-length, tensed my right arm to pound it through his face as soon as I shoved the glass aside. He had a revolver-bore for a top vest-button, trained on me. Two more had shown up behind him, from which direction I hadn't noticed. It was very dark in the booth now, their collective silhouettes shut out all the daylight. The station and all its friendly bustle was blotted out, had receded into the far background, a thousand miles away for all the help it could give me. I slapped the glass ~ Cornell Woolrich

Flawed characters ... a ticking clock ... morally questionable acts on all sides ... moody, evocative art ... oh yeah, this the stuff crime noir fans love! ~ Christos Gage

Get a load of this, Frank." Gerald Peyton's pause set off his pronouncement. "She is expecting to get a wedding ring."
"That's understandable," I said, unsure how he could afford a ring on what our firm cleared. Diamond rings - more sold in December than in any other month of the year - went for a cool grand per karat. Weeks ago, I'd priced them - again - for my domestic situation. "What seems to be the problem?"
"That's a big leap for me to make."
"I expect you'll make it with room to spare. ~ Ed Lynskey

There is always a unique atmosphere in the car when you drive through the City with a dead body in the back. ~ Steen Langstrup

The bed lets out a slight gasp of air from the mattress like an old cat fart, but it looks like she's too caught up in herself to notice. ~ John Bowie

The room buzzes around us but we're fixed on each other, engaged in a battle of who can deprecate me more. She obviously doesn't believe such a man can exist and keeps at it, prodding and goading me like a fisherman harpooning an already beached whale. ~ John Bowie

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

It's only crazy if we fail. ~ Henry Mosquera

The hotel was guest-friendly with hourly rates and had enough room to swing a cat, if it were a small cat and you wanted to swing it. ~ James A. Newman

There's no Ben & Jerry's in the netherworld. It's a crime. ~ Anonymous

They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense ~ Truman Capote

Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superseded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime. ~ Robert Fitch

I am hopeful that Antarctica in its symbolic robe of white will shine forth as a continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation. ~ Richard E. Byrd

Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Perfect crime,' he said softly.
'Yes?'
'Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She'll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you'll get away scot free. At the end of nine months she'll be taken off life support and she'll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed. ~ Jane Rogers

The rain beat against the windows and against the tin roof of the hotel. It came down in hissing roars, then in whispers, then in loud shishes like sandpaper rubbed against wood. She drank the second glassful, climbed off the bed and began undressing, and then we were together, the cheap naked bulb still blazing down on the bed.

Thinking back, I remember the stupidest things; the way there was a taut crease just above her hips, in the small of her back. The way she smelled like a baby's breath, a sweet barely there smell that retreated and retreated, so that no matter how close you got to it you weren't sure it was there. The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary.

I remember getting up and coming back to her, and of throwing a shoe at the light bulb, later, when the whisky was gone. I remember the smell of rain-darkness in the room and her telling me I'd cut my feet on the light-bulb glass on the floor. And how she said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rai ~ Elliott Chaze

Fellow Englishman. Ladies and gentleman. You gather here today to see a live man become a dead one, and for my part you shall have satisfaction. But I would offer you a moral lesson to commemorate my passing; otherwise it might as well be bull baiting you witness here today. However I shall not deliver a warning that crime does not pay, for it pays very well; nor that a life of drink and debauchery leads inevitably to destruction, for I haven't led such a life. Here's what this little life of mine has taught me. There is only one reason to live, and there is only one reason to die, and that is love. If you have not known love, you have not lived. But if, when death comes to take your soul, you have loved someone dearly, then your soul is safe; for it lives in the bosom of your sweetheart, and death can make no claim upon it. That is all I know, and it is enough. Farewell. ~ Ben Tripp

So, Mr. Shane, you felt you had the right to come down here and bespoil my crime scene because ... " He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer. "I thought he might need assistance," Shane lied. "And the untoward angle of his neck did not tell you that he was beyond any earthly assistance you might render?" "I'm not a doctor, sir," Shane said. "Neither are you a miracle worker, son," Xavier said. "Should you find any other bodies in my jurisdiction, you will refrain from attempting to raise them from the dead. ~ Jennifer Crusie

Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime. ~ Terry Pratchett

If you don't have a car, ride a bicycle or a donkey. ~ Charles Nqakula

The worst crime I could think of would be to pull people off by faking it, pretending as if I'm having 100% fun. ~ Kurt Cobain

There was, I thought, something calling to me from out in the dark.
It came from out in the tempest, even from the lights of the fishing boats a mile out at sea. You can be called to a last effort, a final heroic statement, because I doubt you call yourself to leave comforts and certainties for an open road. But the call is inside your own head. It's a sad summons from the depths of your own wasted past. You could call it the imperative to go out with full-tilt trumpets and gunshots instead of the quietly desperate sound of the hospital ventilator. Victory instead of defeat. ~ Lawrence Osborne

With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. ~ Robert H. Jackson

It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old old place ... St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. just a place where you can talk to your god and sometimes get an answer. ~ Simon R. Green

Was there any form of filth or crime without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut into such a sore, you find, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light, a Jew. ~ Adolf Hitler

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful ~ Shirin Neshat

, civilization is an ever-changing tacit agreement, culturally inherited, not chosen at birth. Civilization is the invention of man, my big friend. It is a means of ensuring order and structure; it is man's attempt to expunge all and every act of randomness from daily life. The ultimate goal of civilization is determinism, the complete absence of freewill. If everyone adhered to every rule, every demand, every decree of civilization, there would be no accidents, no arguments, no crime! Man would move through his life smoothly, like a well-oiled cog in a grandfather clock. ~ Peter Jelen

When trying a case [the famous judge] L. Cassius never failed to inquire "Who gained by it?" Man's character is such that no one undertakes crimes without hope of gain. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I ... daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother's heart; surely I too must be an accomplice in the crime. Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? ~ Charles Spurgeon

FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is real.Except imagination~with a pinch of perception, and a dash of collusion used as the Clabber.
Be So Advised. ~ J.D. Brayton

In no other modern religion is dissent still a crime, punishable by death. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others. Bad seeds ultimately produce bad fruits as their destinies unfold. . . Upholding a Good-Evil dichotomy also takes 'good people' off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating, sustaining, perpetuating, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror, and violence. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Beware! Abstain from shedding blood without a valid cause. There is nothing more harmful than this which brings about one's ruin. The blood that is willfully shed shortens the life of a state. On the Day of Judgement it is this crime for which one will have to answer first. So, beware! Do not wish to build the strength of your state on blood for, it is this blood which ultimately weakens the state and passes it into other hands. Before me and my God no excuse for willful killing can be entertained. ~ Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

We hear these people argue that, somehow, we are trying to strip people of their constitutional rights. What about our constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? It's difficult to achieve those rights when you're dead. ~ Mark M. Bello

Opinion, and the just maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in my view. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Every crime destroys more Edens than our own ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

There was a war crimes trial because an American prisoner had been shot trying to escape. He had obviously been recaptured and shot, and that violated the Geneva Convention. ~ Charles Guggenheim

In the wake of prevalent child rape and child abuse cases reported and unreported; Infliction of "Death Penalty" for child rape irrespective of the degree of offence or homicide , and rigorous penalty for child molestation, would serve as an excellent deterrent mechanism
Debates on Human Rights to the perpetrator of the crime on the question of infliction of death penalty should be cordoned off taking into consideration the aftermath of sexual assault /rape of a child exposed to the Pandora's pack of resilience ~ Henrietta Newton Martin B.Com LLB Goldmedalist LLM Goldmedalist MMS Etc - Legal Consultant

Who knows, perhaps the will to please leads people to crime as often as evil or greed does. People want to fit in and do well, and they do indescribably stupid things because of it. Is that what happened here? ~ David Lagercrantz

There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up." But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable. ~ Josh Marshall

Sunlight came through the windows slowly, like something liquid pouring between the red curtains on to the rug. The sunlight was like an arpeggio that Tom could almost hear -- this time Chopin, perhaps. ~ Patricia Highsmith

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

Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept "impure", is the crime par excellence against life
is the real sin against the holy spirit of life ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's just a crime that people don't take the time and make the effort to have a conversation if it's bothering them that much. ~ Shelley Long

Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime. ~ Imre Lakatos

To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize, and yet when it comes to the greatest crime - waging war on another state - they praise it! . . . If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish black and white.... So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all - the waging of war on another state - but actually praise it - cannot distinguish right and wrong.104 ~ Steven Pinker

We always wonder, when we see two people together, particularly when they're actually married, how these two people could have arrived at such a decision, such an act, so we tell ourselves that it's a matter of human nature, that it's very often a case of two people going together, getting together, only in order to kill themselves in time, sooner or later to kill themselves, after mutually tormenting each other for years for for decades, only to end up killing themselves anyway, people who get together even though they probably clearly perceive their future of shared torment, who join together, get married, in the teeth of all reason, who against all reason commit the natural crime of bringing children into the world who then proceed to be the unhappiest imaginable people, we have evidence of this situation wherever we look... People who get together and marry even though they can foresee their future together only as a lifelong shared martyrdom, suddenly all these people qua human beings, human beings qua ordinary people... enter into a union, into a marriage, into their annihilation, step by step down they go into the most horrible situation imaginable, annihilation by marriage, meaning annihilation mental, emotional, and physical, as we can see all around us, the whole world is full of instances confirming this... why, I may well ask myself, this senseless sealing of the bargain, we wonder about it because we have an instance of it before us, how did this instance come to ~ Thomas Bernhard