Inspector Morse Quotes

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse ~ Colin Dexter

I'm not good with the low-level unexplained. I worry at such things. I'm quite relaxed about the great mysteries of the universe; when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of Inspector Morse, I'll find out what's going on eventually. ~ David Mitchell

In the early days of the New England colonies, no more embarrassing or hampering condition, no greater temporal ill, could befall any adult Puritan than to be unmarried. ~ Alice Morse Earle

You eat the wealthy, sir, and it will be your last meal. ~ J.S.B. Morse

So, let me guess. You want me to give you flea baths?" They all wagged their tails excitedly at the idea. ~ Jody Morse

Mr Lockwood, you've impressed a lot of people over the years. Personally, I expected you to be ghost-touched long ago, but your agency has flourished. Impress me again now... Let them forget about you... Even now, it's probably not too late. - Inspector Barnes ~ Jonathan Stroud

His gaze settled on her mouth. "Have you been kissed before, inspector?"
"Why?" If he wanted virgin lips, she'd claim to have serviced an army.
"If it's your first, I'll do it differently."
"You won't do it at all."
"Yes, I will. ~ Meljean Brook

Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that's lacking breaks - a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath. ~ Michael Harris

A cheap, utilitarian clock hung on the wall; its secondhand clicked inconsistently - slow, fast, fast, slow - as if it were spitting out Morse code. ~ Anonymous

We ain't speak, clicking heat is our Morse code. ~ Ka

From now on all of my guitar solos will be in morse code. ~ Jason Hicks

There'll be the lightning bugs with their Morse code display,
And shooting stars and constellations to befriend;
The dragonflies will keep us from going astray,
As we search for new adventures 'round every bend.
-excerpted from the poem 'The Huge Playroom that is Nature' in the book FROM GUAM TO CROWN CITY CORONADO (THANKS TO HERMANN, MISSOURI): A JOURNEY IN POESY ~ Mariecor Ruediger

I just figured, "If I can do theater, agents will find their way." ~ David Morse

There are worse forms of prostitution than whoring.
-Inspector John Rebus ~ Ian Rankin

Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body - a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body. ~ Colin Dexter

And I maintain, Detective Halse," said Inspector Fry doggedly, "that the civil unrest which allowing this message to remain in view would foment is against the principles of conscience and of British decency. Are you against the principles of British decency, Detective? ~ Lyndsay Faye

When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. ~ Alice Morse Earle

No one is perfect and parenting is excellent at magnifying that fact. ~ J.S.B. Morse

O, how I wish I could have conducted a chemical analysis on the look Inspector Hewitt gave me! It was composed of equal parts skepticism, outrage, acceptance, gratitude, relief, and surrender. I had never seen anything quite like it. ~ Alan Bradley

The president receives an inspector general's report that the Office of Personnel Management could be hacked into; they had antiquated firewalls; 23 million files have been - are in the hands of the Chinese allegedly, including, by the way, members of the press, it turns out, last week. Maybe that's the only part that's good news, so that you guys can get a feel for what it's like now to see this type of attack. ~ Jeb Bush

Sing it like the midnight wind, Sing it like a prayer; Sing it on to the way to hell, Them blues'll take you there. - Oren Morse, Dead Man's Song ~ Jonathan Maberry

History Eraser

I got drunk and fell asleep atop the sheets but luckily i left the heater on.
And in my dreams i wrote the best song that i've ever written...can't remember how it goes.
I stayed drunk and fell awake and i was cycling on a plane and far away i heard you say you liked me.
We drifted to a party -- cool. The people went to arty school. They made their paints by mixing acid wash and lemonade

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

I found an ezra pound and made a bet that if i found a cigarette i'd drop it all and marry you.
Just then a song comes on: "you can't always get what you want" -- the rolling stones, oh woe is we, the irony!
The stones became the moss and once all inhibitions lost, the hipsters made a mission to the farm.
We drove by tractor there, the yellow straw replaced our hair, we laced the dairy river with the cream of sweet vermouth.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

You said "we only live once" so we touched a little tongue, and instantly i wanted to...
I lost my train of thought and jumped aboard the Epping as the doors were slowly closing on the world.
I touched on and off and rubbed my arm up against yours and still the inspector inspected me.
The lady in the roof was living proof that nothing really ever is exactly as it seems.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the p ~ Courtney Barnett

Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology as "Seven years' hard". Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the severe sanction of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat with a certain resignation. They were his fellow citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different w ~ Joseph Conrad

By George!" cried the inspector. "How did you ever see that?"
Because I looked for it. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

By day, Ian was like the stars, there but not there. At night was when the beasts of grief came for her. ~ Eleanor Morse

The four had rented a riverside cottage and lived together there as two couples. Their vice was public, official and perfectly obvious to all. It was referred to quite naturally as something entirely normal. There were rumours about jealous scenes that took place there and about the various actresses and other famous women who frequented the little cottage near the water's edge. One neighbour, scandalized by the goings-on, alerted the police at one stage and an inspector accompanied by one of his men came to make enquiries. It was a delicate mission: there was nothing the women could be prosecuted for, least of all prostitution. The inspector was deeply puzzled and could not understand what these alleged misdemeanours could possibly be. He asked a whole lot of pointless questions, compiled a lengthy report and dismissed the charges out of hand. The joke spread as far as Saint-Germain. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Hodgkin had just returned from his second visit to Paris, where he had learned to prepare and dissect cadaveric specimens. He was promptly recruited to collect specimens for Guy's new museum. The job's most inventive academic perk, perhaps, was his new title: the Curator of the Museum and the Inspector of the Dead. Hodgkin ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The door opened to reveal something like the opposite of Inspector Genette: a very big man. Prognathous, callipygous, steatopygous, exophthalmos - toad, newt, frog - even the very words were ugly. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

[ISIS] are actively recruiting Americans. The attacker in San Bernardino was an American citizen, born and raised in this country. He was a health inspector; had a newborn child and left all that behind to kill 14 people. ~ Marco Rubio

Why did people do it? Why this herd curiosity about a street, a house, windows, doors? He was a public servant, the Inspector mused, but there were times when he would enjoy loading all the rubbernecks onto barges and towing them out to sea to be served, with ceremony, to sharks. ~ Ellery Queen

Painting has been a smiling mistress to many, but she has been a cruel jilt to me; I did not abandon her, she abandoned me. ~ Samuel Morse

Words are useful, sir. That's from the communicating point of view. They come into their own then. When you think about it, even Morse code, which seems to be only dots and dashes, is actually dots and dashes signifying letters, and letters that go to make words. I don't know where we'd be without them. For instance, I wouldn't be able to say "I don't know where we'd be without them" if we were without them....

But for myself, I admit I find words quite handy, especially during, for instance, speech or writing. Yes, I think I'd find both of those tricky without words. ~ Bill James

I know that I and my office acted with the highest integrity as an independent inspector general should act. ~ Gerald Walpin

In independent film you tend to have stories that involve more of a community, and the smaller characters are important to the story. ~ David Morse

Stressful situations cause alterations in behavior that reveal true character, Tibbs. If a person gradually begins acting like someone else altogether, you may very well find that they *are* someone else altogether" -Inspector Percival Pensive ~ Jessica Lawson

I glanced at Carson, who had promised things would be alright. His gaze was on the floor, and a muscle in his jaw flexed rhythmically but unhelpfully. If he was trying to send me a message, I was out of luck, because I'd never learned Morse Code for Assholes. ~ Rosemary Clement-Moore