Murder At The Brightwell Quotes

We looked into one another's eyes, and I think we both knew in that instant that the past was behind us. We could never be to each other what we had been once. ~ Ashley Weaver

Love makes a mess of things, doesn't it?' he said, as though he was speaking to himself. 'People are always falling in love with the wrong people. It happens over and over. It would be so much simpler if . . . ~ Ashley Weaver

In the meantime, the porter's gone. How much time until we reach our next stop?'

I glanced at my wristwatch, an absurd fluttery feeling in my stomach. 'Nearly an hour.'

'Excellent,' he said, lowering his mouth again to mine. 'Let's make the most of it.'

And so we did. ~ Ashley Weaver

Despite the rocky start, I wound up enjoying a beautiful day on the ranch with Marlboro Man and his parents. I didn't ride a horse--my legs were still shaky from my near-murder of his mother earlier in the day--but I did get to watch Marlboro Man ride his loyal horse Blue as I rode alongside him in a feed truck with one of the cowboys, who gifted me right off the bat with an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. I felt welcome on the ranch that day, felt at home, and before long the memory of my collision with a gravel ditch became but a faint memory--that is, when Marlboro Man wasn't romantically whispering sweet nothings like "Drive much?" softly into my ear. And when the day of work came to an end, I felt I knew Marlboro Man just a little better.
As the four of us rode away from the pens together, we passed the sad sight of my Toyota Camry resting crookedly in the ditch where it had met its fate. "I'll run you home, Ree," Marlboro Man said.
"No, no…just stop here," I insisted, trying my darnedest to appear strong and independent. "I'll bet I can get it going." Everyone in the pickup burst into hysterical laughter. I wouldn't be driving myself anywhere for a while. ~ Ree Drummond

Some people call that picturesque' said Sir Percival, pointing over the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. 'I call it a blot on a gentleman's property. In my great-grandfather's time, the lake flowed to this place. Look at it now! It is not four feet deep anywhere, and it is all puddles and pools. I wish I could afford to drain it, and plant it all over. My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think, Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn't it?'
'My good Percival!' remonstrated the Count. 'What is your solid English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body; and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer's footsteps. It is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes on. ~ Wilkie Collins

I can't keep my head above water one minute to the next: it's not just the parties and the goo-gooing with what's-her-name, I've got the decide how long the Five Hundredth Anniversary Parade is going to be and where does it start and when does it start and which nobleman gets to march in front of which other nobleman so that everyone's still speaking to me at the end of it, plus I've got a wife to murder and a country to frame for it, plus I've got to get the war going once that's all happened, and all this is stuff I've got to do myself. Here's what it all comes down to: I'm just swamped, Ty. ~ William Goldman

While law-abiding Muslims are forced to hide in their homes, and animal-rights activists are labeled as terrorists for undercover filming of abusive treatment at factory farms, right-wing hate groups are free to organize, parade, arm themselves to the hilt and murder with chilling regularity. It's time for our society to confront this very real threat. ~ Amy Goodman

Host: For those of you just tuning in, our guests tonight are the amazing Murder Magician, and his lovely minion, The Assistant ...
Assistant: Charmed, I'm sure
Host: Who recently killed The Rumor. And you were awarded the Oppenheimer prize for villainy at last week's annual summit for dastardly deeds
what are you going to do with all that money?
Murder Magician: Well, I'm so glad you asked that
because I spent all the money on this giant MURDERBOT, and I've been dying to show it off!
Assistant: It's true ... every penny.
Host: Wow! That's impressive! So what does it do?
Murder Magician: Well, Mr. Clark ... it murders people.
Laughter.
Murder Magician: I'm serious.
Assistant: He is. ~ Gerard Way

And then I recalled those mysterious stories about the waxworkers of the middle ages and the public reprobation attached to their trade. Did they not live in cellars, in the eternal twilight propitious for enchantments and apparitions? Their visionary art (who, more than they, evoked a truer image of life?) was closely related to that of magicians: bewitchments were carried out with wax figures, witch trials are full of them, and one particular legend haunted me above all, that of the modeler from Anspach, who slowly squeezed the soul and the life out of his model in order to animate his painted waxwork and then, having finished his work of art, awaited nightfall to go and bury the corpse in the ditch at the city walls. ~ Jean Lorrain

And what do you know, John's hands flew through the positions
of ASL in various l-got-this combinations.
"Is he deaf" the guy behind the cash register asked in a stage
whisper. As if someone using American Sign Language was some kind
of freak.
"No. Blind."
"Oh."
As the man kept staring, Qhuinn wanted to pop him. "You going
to help us out here or what?"
"Oh ... yeah. Hey, you got a tattoo on your face." Mr. Observant
moved slowly, like the bar codes on those bags were creating some kind of wind resistance under his laser reader. "Did you know that?"
Really. "I wouldn't know."
'Are you blind, too?"
No filter on this guy. None. "Yeah, I am."
"Oh, so that's why your eyes are all weird."
"Yeah. That's right."
Qhuinn took out a twenty and didn't wait for change-murder
was just a liiiiiittle too tempting. Nodding to John, who was also measuring the dear boy for a shroud, Qhuinn went to walk off.
"What about your change ?" the man called out.
"I'm deaf, too. I can't hear you."
The guy yelled more loudly, "I'll just keep it then, yeah?"
"Sounds good," Qhuinn shouted over his shoulder.
Idiot was stage-five stupid. Straight up. ~ J.R. Ward

To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For the lady's husband to become actively jealous was considered both doltish and dishonorable, a breach of the spirit of courtesy. Yet the record suggests that this was a fairly common occurrence and one of the occupational hazards of being a troubadour. The most famous crime passionnel of the epoch was the murder of Guilhem de Cabestanh, a troubadour knight whose love for the Lady Seremonda aroused the jealousy of her husband, Raimon de Castel-Roussillon. The story goes that Raimon killed Guilhem while he was out hunting, removed the heart from the body, and had it served to his wife for dinner, cooked and seasoned with pepper. Then comes the great confrontation:
"And when the lady had eaten of it, RAimon de Castel-Roussillon said unto her: "Know you of what you have eaten?' And she said, 'I know not, save that the taste thereof is good and savoury.' Then he said to her that that she had eaten of was in very truth the head of SIr Guilhem of Cabestanh, and caused the head to be brought before her, that she might the more readily believe it. And when the lady had seen and heard this, she straightway fell into a swoon, and when she was recovered of it, she spake and said: "Of a truth, my Lord, such good meat have you given me that never more will I eat of other."
THen he, hearing this, ran upon her with his sword and would have struck at her head, but the lady ran to a balcony, and cast herself down, and so died."
...the story is probably apocryphal… grisly deta ~ Horizon Magazine, Summer 1970

What it meant." "That's fine." Bosch moved to the drawer and looked in. There were two thin manila files and two packs of envelopes with rubber bands holding them together. The first file he looked through contained Eno's birth certificate, passport, marriage license and other personal records. He put it back in the drawer. The next file contained LAPD forms and Bosch quickly recognized them as the pages and reports that had been removed from the Marjorie Lowe murder book. He knew he had no time to read them at the moment and put the file in the beer box with the other files. The rubber band on the first package of envelopes snapped when he tried to remove it and he was reminded of the band that had been around the blue binder that contained the case files. Everything about this case was old and ready to snap, he thought. The envelopes were all from a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Sherman Oaks and each one contained a statement for a savings account in the name of McCage ~ Michael Connelly

Even if you escaped this place, which is impossible," Death said, "you would never reach her.

I glanced up at Death. "So my plan should be to wait here, docile, until you murder me? Along with the rest of your lackeys?"

Saying these words out loud was like a corner turned, a line crossed. One answer rang through me.

Never.

After my mother's sacrifice for me, I'd be damned if I rolled over now. I owed it to her to fight.

I had a new mission: self-preservation. I had to get this cuff off, so I could protect myself from Death. Sooner or later the novelty of having me here, his princess in the tower, would wear off.

I needed to be ready.

"Why didn't you tell me about Jack earlier? And Matthew? Why not just torpedo me from the beginning?"

"My reasons are my own. But I did warn you not to give Deveaux your innocence."

I rolled my eyes at his terminology. "Really, Father Time? And what business is it of yours anyway? ~ Kresley Cole

Do you know," he says, closing the cover of the journal only to lay his hand on top of it. Protecting it. Staring at it. "I couldn't sleep for days after I read that entry. I kept wanting to know which people were chasing you down the street, who it was you were running from. I wanted to find them," he says, so softly, "and I wanted to rip their limbs off, one by one. I wanted to murder them in ways that would horrify you to hear. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I believe Triumvirate Holdings wants to control all the ancient Oracles. And I Believe the most ancient Oracle of all, the Grove of Dodona, is right here at Camp Half-Blood"

I WAS A DREAMATIC GOD.

I thought my last statement was a great line, I expected gasps, perhaps some organ music in the background. Maybe the lights would go out just before I could say more. Moments later I would be found dead with a knife in my back. That would be exciting!

Wait. I'm a mortal. Murder would kill me. Never mind ~ Rick Riordan

Bastien rolled his eyes, "Calm down, Hauk. All you're going to do is hurt yourself."
He glared at Bastien. "If you want to see exactly how angry someone can get, tell them to calm down when they're already pissed off!" Bellowing, he tried his best to break free.
"Is that helping? I just gotta know."
"When I get loose, Cabarro, your ass is the first one I'm kicking."
"Oh good. Hope you get out soon. Been awhile since I had a good ass-kicking." Bastien made a kissy face at him.
"Says the man who's so bruised, he looks like a two-year old banana."
"Now that's just mean and hurtful."
"Telise! He's awake again."
She moved forward and kicked Hauk in the face. "I wouldn't do that," Bastien warned. "Don't motivate the Andarion for murder. It ain't going to work out well for any of us. 'Specially me, since mine's the first ass he's planning to come after. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

He wanted the world to believe that he was a horse rider. So let him ride his horses at the bottom of the ocean. ~ Mario Puzo

I open the books on Right and on ethics; I listen to the professors and jurists; and, my mind full of their seductive doctrines, I admire the peace and justice established by the civil order; I bless the wisdom of our political institutions and, knowing myself a citizen, cease to lament I am a man. Thoroughly instructed as to my duties and my happiness, I close the book, step out of the lecture room, and look around me. I see wretched nations groaning beneath a yoke of iron. I see mankind ground down by a handful of oppressors, I see a famished mob, worn down by sufferings and famine, while the rich drink the blood and tears of their victims at their ease. I see on every side the strong armed with the terrible powers of the Law against the weak.

And all this is done quietly and without resistance. It is the peace of Ulysses and his comrades, imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops and waiting their turn to be devoured. We must groan and be silent. Let us for ever draw a veil over sights so terrible. I lift my eyes and look to the horizon. I see fire and flame, the fields laid waste, the towns put to sack. Monsters! where are you dragging the hapless wretches? I hear a hideous noise. What a tumult and what cries! I draw near; before me lies a scene of murder, ten thousand slaughtered, the dead piled in heaps, the dying trampled under foot by horses, on every side the image of death and the throes of death. And that is the fruit of your peaceful institutions! Indignat ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I'm not stupid, Mr. Potter. What's the real reason you didn't tell me, and what were you actually doing with Mr. Malfoy?"

"Ah. Well..." Harry broke eye contact with her, and looked down at the library table.

"Draco Malfoy told the Aurors under Veritaserum that he wanted to know if he could beat me, so he challenged me to a duel to test it empirically. Those were his exact words according to the transcript."

"Right," Harry said, still not meeting her eyes. "Hermione Granger. Of course she'll remember the exact wording. It doesn't matter if she's chained to her chair, on trial for murder in front of the entire Wizengamot -"

"What were you really doing with Draco Malfoy?"

Harry winced, and said, "Probably not quite what you're thinking, but..."

The horror scaled and scaled within her, and finally broke loose.

"You were doing SCIENCE with him? "

"Well -"

"You were doing SCIENCE with him? You were supposed to be doing science with ME! ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor - and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us - the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is greatest thing, they persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do ( ... It's a lie to say that love is greatest, what people want is hate - hate, and nothing but hate. And in the name of righteousness and love they get it ... If we want hate, let us have it - death, murder, torture, violent destruction- let us have it: but not in the name of love. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I saw a man swerve his car and try to hit a stray dog, but the quick mutt dodged between two parked cars and made his escape. God, I thought, did I just see what I think I saw? At the next red light, I pulled up beside the man and stared hard at him. He knew that'd I seen his murder attempt, but he didn't care. He smiled and yelled loud enough for me to hear him through our closed windows: 'Don't give me that face unless you're going to do something about it. Come on, tough guy, what are you going to do?' I didn't do anything. I turned right on the green. He turned left against traffic. I don't know what happened to that man or the dog, but I drove home and wrote this poem. Why do poets think they can change the world? The only life I can save is my own. ~ Sherman Alexie

What do you think your valuation is right now? Mark asked as they both sat uncomfortably across from and below him, peering up at a boy who could, hypothetically speaking, quite happily buy them or murder them, all with the same exact expression on his face. ~ Nick Bilton

It's beautiful," said Mort softly. "What is it?"
THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death.
"Is it like this every night?"
EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT.
"Doesn't anyone know?"
ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, ISN'T IT?
"Gosh!"
Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY. ~ Terry Pratchett

It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man's life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend's life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me. ~ Andrew Levkoff

A number of months ago I read in the newspaper that there was a supreme court ruling which states that homosexuals in america have no constitutional rights against the government's invasion of their privacy. The paper states that homosexuality is traditionally condemned in america & only people who are heterosexual or married or who have families can expect those constitutional rights. There were no editorials. Nothing. Just flat cold type in the morning paper informing people of this. In most areas of the u.s.a it is possible to murder a man & when one is brought to trial, one has only to say that the victim was a queer & that he tried to touch you & the courts will set you free. When I read the newspaper article I felt something stirring in my hands; I felt a sensation like seeing oneself from miles above the earth or looking at one's reflection in a mirror through the wrong end of a telescope. Realizing that I have nothing left to lose in my actions I let my hands become weapons, my teeth become weapons, every bone & muscle & fiber & ounce of blood become weapons, & I feel prepared for the rest of my life. ~ David Wojnarowicz

But he couldn't feel self-pity in the face of the memorial. He hadn't lost nearly enough as these children, who'd lost their homeland and, in many cases,their whole families. Perhaps they had gained something, too, though. They had at least escaped the concentration camps, been taken in by good, caring families, and had grown up to live their lives in relative freedom. ~ Peter Robinson

The dead man's face was pale and bloodless. The fierce white lights in the morgue showed up every detail mercilessly and every last pore and pock-mark was revealed, the history of a life, now reduced to a mere handful of scars.
'Always nice to see you Mark, but what brings you in so late on Friday afternoon?' Lambert said nothing, staring at Petrie's corpse, before turning to the coroner. John Humby was older and getting close to retirement and the two had been friends for a very long time. Humby resembled a large blood-hound, the more so the older he got and he was smiling over at Lambert, who was still thinking about the murder. ~ Stevie O'Connor

The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case. ~ James Ellroy

Mel? Mel, I love you. Mel, come back . Mel, Mel, Mel."
It's Jared's voice, trying to call me back the way Wanda called back the Healer's host, the way she taught Kyle to call to Jodi.
I can answer him. I can speak now. I can feel my tongue in my mouth, ready to move into whatever shape I ask it to. I can feel the air in my lungs, ready to push out the words. If I want this.
"Mel, I love you, I love you."
This is Wanda's gift to me, paid for with her silver blood. Jared and I, put back together again as if she'd never lived. As if she hadn't saved us both.
If I accept this gift, I profit from her death. I kill her again. I take her sacrifice and make it murder.
"Mel, please? Open your eyes."
I feel his hand on my face, cradling my cheek. I feel his lips burn against my forehead, but I don't want them, not at this price.
Or do I? ~ Stephenie Meyer

The Murder Burger is served right here.
You need not wait at the gate of Heaven for unleavened death.
You can be a goner on this very corner.
Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh.
If you wish to eat it you must feed it.
Yall come back soon.
You bet. ~ Stan Rice

Richard looked up at the beautiful, big pines spreading over them, illuminated in the firelight. A spark of understanding lit in his mind. He saw the branches stretched out with murderous intent in a years-long struggle to reach the sunlight and dispatch its neighbors with its shade. Success would give space for its offspring, many of which would also shrivel in the shade of the parent. Several close neighbors of the big pine were withered and weak, victims all. It was true. The design of nature was success by murder. ~ Terry Goodkind

And then there is the waiter. Not pathetic-decidedly not comic. Never making one of those perfectly insignificant remarks which amaze you so coming from a waiter (as though the poor wretch were a sort of coffee-pot and a wine bottle and not expected to hold so much as a drop of anything else). He is grey, flat-footed, and withered, with long, brittle nails that set your nerves on edge while he scrapes up your two sous. When he is not smearing over the table or flicking at a dead fly or two, he stands with one hand on the back of a chair, in his far too long apron, and over his other arm the three-cornered dip of dirty napkin, waiting to be photographed in connexion with some wretched murder. "Interior of Café where Body was Found." You've seen him hundreds of times. ~ Katherine Mansfield

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process. ~ Ryu Murakami

She tried to hurt Fitz!" He turned to Gabriel and Dick. "That'll get her mad. "
Gabriel rolled his eyes. "She's been framed for murder twice over, shot in the back, her arms were set on fire, and her parents are being held hostage. You think tampered dog water is what's going to make her angry?"
"You tried to hurt my dog!" I wheezed as I lurched toward a grinning Missy.
"Oh, big deal, " Missy huffed. "It's the ugliest dog I've ever seen. "
"You tried to hurt my dog, " I said again.
"I would have been doing you a favor. " Missy sneered.
"Nobody. Screws. With. My. Dog. " I growled, punctuating each word with a punch to Missy's face. I gave an upper cut to the chin that sent her flying back into a pile on the ground.
Zeb grinned at Dick and Gabriel. "Told you. ~ Molly Harper

Daring to approach the brothers' tension-filled embrace, Livia touched one of Beckett's coiled arms. "Beckett." She waited until his furious face turned toward her mouth. "I still need you. Here. I can't wait for him without you. You promised. I'm not man enough. Remember?"
Livia held her breath.
"You've got your sister," he said quietly.
"Let go of him, Cole. Please." Livia nodded at the puzzle of arms, each with its own agenda.
Cole looked reluctant as he stepped away, keeping his body between Beckett and Chris.
"It has to be all of us. Don't ask me how I know, but I do. We all have to sit here and hope for the best. Pray for the best. Even with that pile of shit right there." Livia didn't have to point; they could all feel pulsating of the evil that was lodged in Chris.
"We have to think about Blake - getting fixed, getting healed, getting back to us. Adding murder to tonight is wrong. It's all wrong. You have to make a different choice. I trust you, Beckett. You can do this."
Livia's earnest words seemed to make Beckett want to curse. His face boiled red for a moment. Only Beckett could hear Livia's gentle breath that pleaded, "Please."
Rather than leaping to action, he rubbed his forehead and took in great gasps of air. Finally, he grabbed her head in a giant hug. "For you, Whitebread. Only for fucking you. ~ Debra Anastasia

Pedro Algorta, a lawyer, showed me the fat dossier about the murder of two women. The double crime had been committed with a knife at the end of 1982, in a Montevideo suburb.

The accused, Alma Di Agosto, had confessed. She had been in jail more than a year, and was apparently condemned to rot there for the rest of her life.

As is the custom, the police had raped and tortured her. After a month of continuous beatings they had extracted several confessions. Alma Di Agosto's confessions did not much resemble each other, as if she had committed the same murder in many different ways. Different people appeared in each confession, picturesque phantoms without names or addresses, because the electric cattle prod turns anyone into a prolific storyteller. Furthermore, the author demonstrated the agility of an Olympic athlete, the strength of a fairground Amazon, and the dexterity of a professional matador. But the most surprising was the wealth of detail: in each confession, the accused described with millimetric precision clothing, gestures, surroundings, positions, objects.....

Alma Di Agosto was blind.
Her neighbours, who knew and loved her, were convinced she was guilty:
'Why?' asked the lawyer.
'Because the papers say so.'
'But the papers lie,' said the lawyer.
'But the radio said so too,' explained the neighbours.
'And the TV! ~ Eduardo Galeano

Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. "Where is he?" he demanded without preamble.
Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, "He's gone."
"Why didn't you follow him?" White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian's eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw.
Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner's volcanic temper, remained unruffled. "It was unnecessary in my judgment," he said. "He won't return."
"I don't pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard."
Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him - and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband's head.
"I want him found," Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. "I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he'll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife." He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. "Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available - private ones. I don't want some idiot from ~ Lisa Kleypas

A 22-caliber bullet can travel as fast as 1,022 mph. I learned that at Quantico.
However, the bullet that hit him probably traveled at 818 mph. Sound travels at 761 mph. I hear the bullet after I see the shot enter his head.
But in my mind it all goes so fast that it's just a single message. ~ Francis Barel

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied.

With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . .

We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race.

Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our oppositio ~ Russell Kirk

Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realise that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun. ~ Catherynne M Valente

You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me. ~ Quentin Tarantino

For Marx, nature is to be subjugated in order to obey history; for Nietzsche, nature is to be
obeyed in order to subjugate history. It is the difference between the Christian and the Greek. Nietzsche,
at least, foresaw what was going to happen: "Modern socialism tends to create a form of secular
Jesuitism, to make instruments of all men"; and again: "What we desire is well-being. ... As a result we
march toward a spiritual slavery such as has never been seen. . . . Intellectual Caesarism hovers over
every activity of the businessman and the philosopher." Placed in the crucible of Nietzschean philosophy,
rebellion, in the intoxication of freedom, ends in biological or historical Caesarism. The absolute negative had driven Stirner to deify crime simultaneously with the individual. But the absolute affirmative leads to
universalizing murder and mankind simultaneously. Marxism-Leninism has really accepted the burden
of Nietzsche's freewill by means of ignoring several Nietzschean virtues. The great rebel thus creates with
his own hands, and for his own imprisonment, the implacable reign of necessity. Once he had escaped
from God's prison, his first care was to construct the prison of history and of reason, thus putting the
finishing touch to the camouflage and consecration of the nihilism whose conquest he claimed. ~ Albert Camus

Apparently she's got revenge on her mind, and it's really annoying when people try to talk at you while you're feeling murderish. ~ Amie Kaufman

There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story set in a public school - I'd once taught at Eton, and I used that stuff. ~ John Le Carre

... Obviously, I have always wished I could remember what happened in that wood. The very few people who know about the whole Knocknaree thing invariably suggest, sooner or later, that I should try hypnotic regression, but for some reason I find the idea distasteful. I'm deeply suspicious of anything with a whiff of the New Age about it - not because of the practices themselves, which as far as I can tell from a safe distance may well have a lot to them, but because of the people who get involved who always seem to be the kind who corner you at parties to explain how they discovered that they are survivors and deserve to be happy. I worry that I might come out of hypnosis with that sugar-high glaze of self-satisfied enlightenment, like a seventeen-year-old who's just discovered Kerouak, and start proselytizing strangers in pubs ... ~ Tana French

No one outside could imagine what it felt like to squeeze the life out of a man, to feel the jerking and juddering as you throttled away their last breath. Sometimes Jared found himself staring at his own hands, marveling at what they'd done, disgusted at their violence but proud of their ability to protect. ~ Holly Stone

It is truly wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably ineffective - and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your own public journals. In the few cases that get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain bodies found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that are reported by the cases that are not reported, and the bodies that are found by the bodies that are not found, and what conclusion do you come to? This. That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in nine cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated, highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out of ten lose. If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation you build u ~ Wilkie Collins

On the night of the murder I was at home, asleep. The characters in my dream can vouch for me. ~ Jarod Kintz

Have you ever wondered how to commit human sacrifice and destroy all the evidence while having a delicious meal all at the same time? It's called cannibalism and all it means is eating another human being. It's not that hard. ~ Tim Heidecker