Vintage Crime Quotes

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me. ~ Jeff Lindsay

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime. ~ W.S. Gilbert

Lack of empathy lies at the heart of every crime - certainly my own - yet empathy is the key to bringing a former prisoner back into the fold of society. ~ Piper Kerman

It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Beautiful things that are underused is a crime. ~ Jennifer Probst

The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast. ~ H.L. Mencken

Surprised huh, thought you had me back in prison didn't you? To answer your question what keeps me alive is my drive, my drive to kill you! I have nothing, but hate for you and your family. It will be my pleasure taking you out. I don't care about power, plutonium or even being rich. None of that matters to me. I only care about taking you out. Even if I die I want to be the one who is called the killer of Angel Medina! There's no where for you to go. Now we will truly see who is better! Come on put up you hands and prepare for your final battle of your life! - Orlando from Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War ~ Angel Ramon Medina

You're taking classes? That's great. Crime scene etiquette, perhaps? ~ Kim Harrison

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe. ~ P.D. James

It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin. ~ Richard Ford

What happened to you was a crime. I can't change that. What I can do is teach you to live with dignity. ~ Neal Shusterman

From Zachary Blake? Not a chance in hell. All his cases are high-profile. And these days, he's got a Midas touch. Every case he touches turns to gold. Blake is on a personal crusade for civil justice and safety - truth, justice, and the American way, don't you know? Guns are an excellent target issue for someone like him. ~ Mark M. Bello

I believe that whenever you do something right it gives you a little bit of weight so that you come to feel rooted to this earth more solid, secure. Now what scares me is, well sometimes out of nowhere a bad wind blows up. It could be cancer, could be drink, could be some woman who don't belong to you. And despite the weight holding you to the ground, when that wind comes, it picks you up light as a leaf and takes you where it wants. Were in control until were not. Then were helpless. ~ Truman Capote

Organized medicine quickly adopted the stance that his alleged "cures" fell into three categories: those who never had cancer in the first place; those who were cured by prior radiation and surgery; and those who died. When Healing Becomes a Crime ~ Kenny Ausubel

Just as ancient tyrants gave the people bread and circuses, in exchanged for their loyalty, so visions can acquire a tyrannical sway over people's minds by offering them an exalted sense of themselves in exchange for their loyalty to the vision through all the vicissitudes of facts to the contrary. This self-exaltation can take on many forms on many issues.
Whether the particular issue is crime, automobile safety, income statistics, military defense, or overpopulation theories, the one consistency among them is that the conclusions reached exalt those who share the vision over the great unwashed who do not. ~ Thomas Sowell

I'm so excited. I just bought a new file cabinet, some manila folders, some sticky note pads, and a few highlighters, and I think I'm finally ready to enter into organized crime. ~ Jarod Kintz

Kit spoke vintage vinyl in all its dialects. And he casually rubbed elbows with stars from all walks of life. Oh, and he was twenty. And drop-dead gorgeous. Kit Hemion was a very big way Aaron's Records made money with the West Side set. ~ Suzanne Stroh

Online crime is practically always international, because they almost always cross traditional national borders. ~ Mikko Hypponen

We need democracy and meritocracy, not mockracy and hypocrisy. ~ TheKeyAuthor

I couldn't believe it. I had broken the law simply by not wearing clothes. ~ Matt Haig

Make it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. ~ Jerry Weller

Remorse is the fruit of crime. ~ Juvenal

Block Watch, Crime Watch, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans, every day and night, risking their lives, going out for no pay as volunteers, protecting Americans like all of you and not asking anything in return. And the other day I'm speaking in a high school in New Jersey and the youngsters go, oh, you're just like Zimmerman. ~ Curtis Sliwa

She knew with chilling and absolute certainty she was next. ~ Alexa Grace

Governments commit more crimes upon persons and property and contribute more to their insecurity than all [the] criminals put together. ~ Josiah Warren

If you want to convince a criminal to see things your way, start by seeing things theirs. ~ Aubrea Summer

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death? ~ Mary Shelley

I'm responding to the will of the people. ~ David Mamet

A lot of the people who are supposed to be enforcing the crime, enforcing the law, are also criminals. They've suppressed something in their childhood and they don't want to think they themselves were sexually abused as children or they are abusing their own children and they're sitting on a bench and they either can't admit it, won't admit it, depending on how deeply buried it is. ~ Gloria Steinem

It's about contradictions between us and inside us, between individuals and society, between dream and reality. Sometimes these contradictions express themselves in violence, such as racial conflict. And this mirror of crime can take us back to the Greek authors. ~ Henning Mankell

I believe I could commit a crime. We all can. It depends on which situations we find ourselves in. In despair, I would steal food if my children were hungry. ~ Karin Fossum

No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn't come in! This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood 'renews,' when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the murder and couldn't take the money, and what he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn't enough for him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the bell-ringing, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself. ~ G.K. Chesterton

A majority of the crime in the downtown is property crime. There have been a few larcenies and burglaries, but robberies and assaults are not common in the downtown. There isn't usually any violent crime. ~ Greg Smith

Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid. Not paranoid, exactly, but always alert and aware, like checking out the exits in the movie theatre or the fire escape in a hotel. You came to know, in a way you hadn't as a kid, that the body you inhabited was vulnerable, imperfectly fortified. On TV, in the papers, in books and movies, it isn't ever men being raped or kidnapped or bludgeoned or dismembered or burned with acid. But in stories and crime shows and TV series and movies and in life too, it's going on all the time, all around you. So you learn, in your mind, that your body needs to be protected. It's both precious and totally dispensable, depending on whom you encounter. ~ Claire Messud

Under Zia's regime life for women in Pakistan became much more restricted. Jinnah said, "No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women." But General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman's evidence in court to count for only half that of a man's. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn't produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime. ~ Malala Yousafzai

In war, as in politics, no evil - even if it is permissible under the rules - is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I also smoked two cigarettes, which was pretty good considering I could have smoked five if I'd really tried. ~ S.A. Tawks

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid I'll never get a chance to live! ~ A.A. Bell

I want to separate sin from crime. You may have to ask forgiveness for your sins from God, but not from the Minister of Justice. There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. ~ Pierre Trudeau

Romance can be a by-product of crime. ~ Agatha Christie

He invites the commission of a crime who does not forbid it, when it is in his power to do so. ~ Seneca The Younger

People are sometimes losing their homes before being convicted of a crime, or their cash or their cars. ~ Sarah Stillman

How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!-What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning. ~ Charles Kingsley

From time to time
I once wondered how one wanders from time to time
And think up the paradox line
Speak of Epoch's crime
Oh I lied, it hasn't happened yet
But bet you better believe it's such a habit that
I just said that in a past mindset ~ Criss Jami