Murder Mysteries Quotes

He told me he was used to getting what he wanted. ~ Celia Conrad

Today I have gathered together my nearest and dearest, my sixteen nieces and nephews (Sit down, Grace Windsor Wexler!) to view the body of your Uncle Sam for the last time. Tomorrow its ashes will be scattered to the four winds. I, Samuel W. Westing, hereby swear that I did not die of natural causes. My life was taken from me–by one of you! ~ Ellen Raskin

I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end. ~ Stephen Sondheim

It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers
men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton
have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times
a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime. ~ S. S. Van Dine

Whenever summer rolls around I begin to realize that I'm a complete and utter book snob. In relation to reading, I have absolutely no guilty pleasures at all. No graphic novels. No murder mysteries. My summer read is really no different from my winter read. I know many bookshops and magazines would have me believe that our summer forays are different, but literature is literature, and unfortunately snobbery is snobbery. ~ Colum McCann

People named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan. ~ Neil Gaiman

...and then a murder mystery will occur. ~ Natsuki Takaya

As much as I adore Agatha Christie - and I think people make this claim about murder mysteries in general - it's often a very conservative mode of storytelling. Usually it's the greedy, climbing, new-money slimeball who wants to take from the aristocracy. ~ Christopher Bollen

In the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for the suckers! Alack! ... Alas! ... only love and romance ... and even then! ... manage to keep selling ... and a few murder mysteries ... ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

In the absence of any concrete evidence. I plump for Leonard Stock as the murderer. First, because he's the most unlikely person, and as anyone who has ever read a murder story knows, it's always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done the deed--and fifty thousand authors can't be wrong. ~ M.M. Kaye

Sometimes, a scene goes on too long and, with this being a suspense story and murder mystery that you're trying to discover through her heightened paranoia, you don't want scenes that take you on a tangent. Sometimes, you love those scenes, but you know that it's better not to be in the overall film. So, I'm not sad that they're not in the main movie, but I do think it's fun for people to get to watch them, if they want to. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

On the advice of my U.K. publishers, I chose a sexless anonymity and published my first five books under the semi-pseudonym, S. J. Bolton. I was happy. I could hide behind a genderless, classless persona and let my creepy, psychological murder-mysteries speak for themselves. ~ Sharon Bolton

They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself
ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide. ~ Walker Percy

San Francisco would be a good location for a murder mystery. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach. ~ Gilbert N. Lewis

Zeus Is Dead is full of laugh-out-loud moments, lashings of sly wit, moan-worthy puns, and a complex, fast-paced storyline. There aren't very many humorous fantasy murder mysteries out there, especially not as intricately constructed as this one. Michael G. Munz takes a 'What if,' and runs with it like a toddler with Mom's smart phone. The guffaw-worthy throwaway bits will remind you of Douglas Adams. A very enjoyable read. ~ Jody Lynn Nye

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with 'In the Valley of Elah.' I said, 'Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax.' And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery. ~ Paul Haggis

It's an honour to have such a wonderful international cast on board for this world famous murder mystery. Writer Stewart Harcourt has created an exquisite script. His attention to detail is impeccable. ~ David Suchet

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom the windows observe shame keeps you
From entering a church and confessing this morning
You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud
That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapers
There are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries
Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines
("Zone") ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

You'd have thought that after twenty years editing murder mysteries I'd have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one. ~ Anthony Horowitz

Perhaps it is true that all that happens is in accordance with Your will, and thus it is good. But sometimes You leave blood on Your instruments. ~ Neil Gaiman

Forgetfulness can sometimes bring freedom of a sort ~ Neil Gaiman

People who would never sneer at sci-fi and murder mysteries have no trouble damning the whole romance genre without reading one. ~ Lauren Willig

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries. ~ Alan Furst

Avoid generalizations. As a fiction writer, I distrust absolute truths, homilies, bromides, sound bites, and also shorthand advice of the sort I'm giving. I like specifics, the longhand version of a story in which it takes four hundred pages to answer a single question about a person's character. Literary writers, unless they are writing fairly tales, learn early never to have characters who are polar opposites, one "good," the other "evil." That's not believable. People are more than just good and evil. Intelligent readers will demand that you not reduce people to such simplistic terms, or resolve situations with "Good always conquers evil," "Might is always right," and so forth. And while such resolutions are common in murder mysteries and action stories, they are feeble in literary fiction, which is supposed to reflect subtle truths about the world. Better to be subtle rather than overbearing, subversive rather than didactic. ~ Amy Tan

It occurred to me then that the man might not be mad; I found this far more disquieting than the alternative. ~ Neil Gaiman

It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it. ~ Steve McConnell

You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies! ~ Lily King

The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty is a farcical fictional meditation on female beauty structured as a mash-up of an old episode of Friends, a fairy tale and a murder mystery. ~ Maureen Corrigan

Twilight is about getting older and relationships - not about a murder mystery. It's about love when you reach a certain age; nothing is in primary colors. ~ Robert Benton

I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand. ~ Eleanor Catton

Amaryllis in Blueberry is a rich, evocative story about an unusual family that will sweep readers away to another place and time. Amaryllis's voice is a spellbinding and unique blend of naivet and wisdom. A perfect melding of family saga, murder mystery and a meditation on faith, loyalty and love, this novel will both haunt and entertain you. ~ Susan Wiggs

I don't have a whole bunch of literary connections. I don't write reviews or attend writer's conferences. I'm kind of shy and don't want to go to a party. I just want to stay home and read my murder mysteries and try to write and cook dinner. ~ Susanna Kaysen

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales. ~ Val McDermid

We shouldn't assume that women and girls don't know the difference between reality and fantasy. We don't fear that men who read murder mysteries and thrillers are going to have a hard time not becoming serial killers, so why should we assume that a girl won't know that she doesn't have to change from a mermaid to human in order to find love just because of a movie? ~ Lyssa Kay Adams

It had always been a part of his job which he found difficult, the total lack of privacy for the victim. Murder stripped away more than life itself. The body was parceled, labelled, dissected; address books, diaries, confidential letters, every part of the victim's life was sought out and scrutinized. Alien hands moved among the clothes, picked up and examined the small possessions, recorded and labelled for public view the sad detritus of sometimes pathetic lives. ~ P.D. James

My goal in life is to get the federal government down to half its present size and under control, and then I can write murder mysteries. ~ Grover Norquist

My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession. ~ Christopher Bollen

In case the term is unfamiliar, the best description ever for 'cozies' is 'murder mysteries where no one cares who got killed because they're all distracted by cooking new recipes or following intricate handicraft instructions.'"--The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap ~ Wendy Welch

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight.

"I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land.

"The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero."

"The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people ~ Ben Okri

Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder. ~ Octave Mirbeau

The man who told me had no reason to lie."
Kate frowned. "Every man has a reason to lie."
"Not when he were planning to murder me a moment later. ~ A.C. Gaughen

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious-that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. ~ Dan Brown

Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistable urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee. ~ J.R. Ward

The punitive measures against murder underscore the gravity of the crime precisely because of the value of the victim. ~ R.C. Sproul

For those who live in Kashmir, the expectations of justice, rarely fulfilled in the Indian subcontinent, are more than optimistic; they belong to fantasy. It makes it all the more difficult for the victims to bear their human losses. At Dalal's house, the once carefully tended plants and hedges were already running wild just a few weeks after his murder, the fish in the pond were mostly dead, and few men sat slumped on the floor in a bare hall under the Islamic calendar of mourning. His mother, persuaded by her male relatives to emerge from the dark room where she had taken to since her son's death, broke down as soon as she noticed the photos of Dalal I had been studying. The pictures showed a young man in dark glasses and trendy clothes, a happy, contented man, someone who had managed to find, amid the relentless violence of the insurgency, a new style and identity for himself, and when Dalal's mother, still crying, while her mother, Dalal's grandmother, sat beside her, quietly wiping her tears with the frayed end of her headscarf, asked what was the point of talking to the press, of speaking about her son to me- he was gone and wouldn't come back; the people who had killed him were too powerful- it was hard not to feel pierced by the truth of what she was saying, hard not to be moved by her grief, and the pain, amid the great human waste of Kashmir, of her helplessness. ~ Pankaj Mishra

One day a little old lady came and asked my name, saying she couldn't read my nametag. I told her and reached for the little slip of paper she held, but she put it behind her back. It seemed she wanted to chat before giving it up. Fine with me. We chatted about our matching cardigans (the fact that I dress like a little old lady was not lost on me) and we chatted about how the Portland weather bothered her bones. We talked for a long while about her husband and how much she'd grown to hate him over the years. Then, since I guessed I'd earned her trust, she handed me her slip of paper. It was for a book on exotic poisons. I got her the book and spent the next few weeks scanning the obituaries for every old man that had died. So, yes, folks I may be an accomplice to murder. Don't say there's no excitement at the library. ~ Nick Pageant

The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself. ~ Socrates

[This legendary Amazonian substance is] a cybernetic transdimentional medium of some sort that is generated out of the mysteries of the physiology of the human body. ~ Terence McKenna

And this tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. ~ Herman Melville

The shears found his throat this time. He fell down on top of them and was silent.
Something dark like mucilage glistened where he lay.
She had jumped back - not in remorse, but to keep the bottom of her skirt clear of his blood. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012 ... And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there. ~ Isabel Allende

Nothing but the natural ignorance of the public, countenanced by the inoculated erroneousness of the ordinary general medical practitioners, makes such a barbarism as vaccination possible ... Recent developments have shown that an inoculation made in the usual general practitioner's light-hearted way, without previous highly skilled examination of the state of the patient's blood, is just as likely to be a simple manslaughter as a cure or preventive. But vaccination is nothing short of attempted murder. A skilled bacteriologist would just as soon think of cutting his child's arm and rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound, as vaccinating it in the same. ~ George Bernard Shaw

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. ~ Joan Didion

But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the highest rewards. ~ Leo Tolstoy

But it's a curse, a condemnation, like an act of provocation, to have been aroused from not being, to have been conjured up from a clot of dirt and hay and lit on fire and sent stumbling among the rocks and bones of this ruthless earth to weep and worry and wreak havoc and ponder little more than the impending return to oblivion, to invent hopes that are as elaborate as they are fraudulent and poorly constructed, and that burn off the moment they are dedicated, if not before, and are at best only true as we invent them for ourselves or tell them to others, around a fire, in a hovel, while we all freeze or starve or plot or contemplate treachery or betrayal or murder or despair of love, or make daughters and elaborately rejoice in them so that when they are cut down even more despair can be wrung from our hearts, which prove only to have been made for the purpose of being broken. And worse still, because broken hearts continue beating. ~ Paul Harding

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. ~ Raymond Chandler

When U.S. prisoners were killed, it was "murder in flagrant disregard of the Geneva Conventions." But when Americans murdered Others, "they had it coming to them. ~ James D. Bradley

Past tense. It's one thing to like a girl who wants another guy. It's another to like a girl who plans to murder you at a time of her convenience. ~ Kresley Cole

The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries..acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state.
No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural ... ~ Joseph Conrad

In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

Is always murder, regardless of motive or circumstance. Thus those who murder or who prepare to murder are malefactors and criminals, regardless of who they may be: kings, princes, marshals or judges. None who contemplates and commits violence has the right to consider himself better than an ordinary criminal. Because it is in the nature of all violence to lead inevitably to crime. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

I was enraged by these heinous acts of barbarism - enraged that people who called themselves Muslims could launch an unprovoked attack on Christians or foreigners, enraged that through their vile acts these terrorists were perverting our faith, which tells us that Christians are among the "people of the Book", that we should show discernment when fighting for the cause of God and not fight those who have not harmed us, that murder and suicide are grievous sins. ~ Pervez Musharraf

But those who initially went to the West were overtaken by the barbarism of the frontier with astonishing speed - think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness. There was murder, mayhem, robbery, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, and all of it on a positively Homeric scale that still has cultural anthropologists enraptured. ~ Simon Winchester

I'm sure you have drawers overflowing with panties the ladies throw at the stage. We saw you guys play down at Mon Brewing a few times. Way to keep the Nineties alive. ~ Jason Jack Miller

All war is murder, robbery, trickery, and no nation ever escaped losses of men, prosperity and virility. War knows no victor. ~ David Starr Jordan

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully. ~ James Ruddick

Mr. Walsh?" a woman's voice said. "Can I get a comment, Mr. Walsh?"
"That's not about me, is it?" I said.
"No, my client. He's on trial for killing his business partner and dissolving him in quicklime. Which is ridiculous."
"Uh-huh."
"It is. Anyone in my client's line of work knows that quicklime is a very poor solvent. Chemical hydrolysis is the method of choice these days. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.
page 155 ~ Dashiell Hammett

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ~ George Orwell

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. ~ Graham Greene

How above-the-law children's books are. Hansel and Gretel (littering, breaking and entering), Rumpelstiltskin (forced labor), Snow White (conspiracy to commit murder), Rapunzel (break of contract). ~ Sloane Crosley