Noir Mystery Quotes

There are a few rules in investigations, and one is to never cringe at the person's appearance that you're about to pump for info. ~ Ruth Bainbridge

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet. ~ Raymond Chandler

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again. ~ Raymond Chandler

Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both. ~ V. Alexander

Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Motherless Brooklyn,' is no movie-of-the-week novelty grafted onto a noir mystery. Maybe his Tourette's is a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with depth, with soul. ~ Gary Krist

She was a cute as a washtub. ~ Raymond Chandler

As I trotted down the hall, Fritz was holding the street door open and three people were entering in the shape of a sandwich – a dick, Zorka, and another dick. ~ Rex Stout

Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery ... ~ Kate Morton

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life ... and promise. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: It is universal. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

So I'm up the ghostie creek without an EMF meter ~ JoAnne Kenrick

You and Galileo," I said.
"Didn't he throw his balls off the leaning tower?" Quirk Said. ~ Robert B. Parker

And so back to Cassie: who was she? Part of the deception; just a friend or something else ... perhaps it was time to find out. ~ Melanie Cusick-Jones

I never felt scandal and confession were necessary to be an actress. I've never revealed my self or even my body in films. Mystery is very important. ~ Claudia Cardinale

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

When it began to grow dark, the Rat, with an air of excitement and mystery, summoned them back into the parlour, stood each of them up alongside of his little heap, and proceeded to dress them up for the coming expedition. ~ Kenneth Grahame

My crime books are actually novels and are written as such. One might even say that each one is really two novels, one of which is the story I tell the reader, and the other the buried story I know and let slip now and then into a clue to whet the reader's interest. ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

All my scripts have artistic backgrounds
ballet, concert hall, opera
and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, do you want to be the murderer or the corpse? ~ Helene Hanff

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it. ~ George R R Martin

I wondered if I could just drop the role I carried like a mantle of a dethroned prince. ~ Walter Mosley

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Some secret emotion darts across his eyes. A beautiful mystery. ~ Marie Lu

To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others - even those with whom we are in conflict - love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. I alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love as power both to resist in our nature what we know we we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal. ~ Chris Hedges

It's not as though I decided to sit down and write a mystery novel so I could capitalize on my parents' success. ~ Jesse Kellerman

She's so different. She doesn't have to get naked to get a man's attention. She just has to walk in a room, glide in with her watery movements, and when she speaks, it's of substance. You fucking want, no…you need to listen. She's profound. It's ruthless on my soul. She is a woman who still blushes when a man looks at her. She's not a child, you know she's lived some sort of difficult life and the mystery of her is breaking me. I want her to crack and break in my hands. I want to open her up and gut her. ~ Christine Zolendz

Yesterday is history
Tomorrow's a mystery ~ Justin Timberlake

Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Writers are like onions, layers upon layers upon layers. ~ Luke Taylor

It was a mystery why the army bothered with a signal communication system when its men were so good at gossip. ~ Ruth Downie

If you don't scare the neighbors while copulating, I'm afraid you're doing something terribly wrong. ~ Lois Greiman

For with all that is grand, grander is the expansion of the mind. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

In a universe devoid of life, any life at all would be immensely meaningful. We ARE that meaning. "And what we see, "says the poet Mary Oliver, "is the world that cannot cherish us, but which we cherish." As though life itself is the great, universal, unrequited love of all time. But there is even more to this. Deep mystery. We are the universe aware of itself. We let the miracle get lost in distractions. On a planet so rich with living companions, much of humanity sentences itself to solitary confinement. Late at night, I used to lie in my boat listening to radio calls from ships to families ashore. There was only one conversation, and it boils down to, "I love you and I miss you: come home safe." Connections make us individuals. Ironic, isn't it? The more connected, the more unique our life becomes ... ~ Carl Safina

Gonzo stares after the Rolls-Royce. He has heroismus interruptus. He was ready, right then, to coordinate four or five hundred terrified civvies, lay down his life, kill for them, make a legend of disinterested soldiering. It's not that he resents what has happened, but he's having trouble changing gear. He was expecting to take charge. Instead he is struggling to keep up with a sexagenarian Mystery Man with an Errol Flynn grin who commands a legion of pirate-monk rally drivers and sweeps formidable older women from their feet in a could of cologne and Asian-Monarchic style. ~ Nick Harkaway

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

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending ... And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. ~ Ian McEwan

Another one of my mystery skills I can't seem to remember. I really hope cooking is on that list, because I'd like to be able to make cupcakes without turning them into cement. ~ Courtney Allison Moulton