Detective Stories Quotes

• Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.

  Steig Larsson

  Writing, Light, Stories

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• Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Political, Fiction

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

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• Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid

  Raymond Chandler

  Hero, Mean, Men

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

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• I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

  Robert Cormier

  Modern Novel, Play, Giving

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].

  Christopher Bollen

  Book, Interesting, Shining

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When, and how, and at what stage of our development did spirituality and our strange notions of religion arise? the need for worship which is nothing more than our frightened refuge into propitiation of a Creator we do not understand? A detective story, the supreme Who-done-it, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, no Rosetta stone supplied by the consummate Mystifier to tease us poor fumbling unravellers of his plot.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Women, Religion, Plot

  Victoria Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West (1985). “No Signposts in the Sea”, Penguin Group USA

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• The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead.

  Stephen Leacock

  Book, Stories, World

  Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies (1981). “The Penguin Stephen Leacock”, Penguin ; Markham, Ont. : Penguin Books Canada

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• I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Book, Thinking, Friendly

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• I don’t think I would ever want to be a writer of detective stories - but I would like to be a detective and there is a large deal of detection in the short story.

  Mary Lavin

  Thinking, Insightful, Stories

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• The cinema, like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and desirousness which must be repressed in a humanitarian ordering of life.

  Carl Jung

  Passion, Cinema, Stories

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.224, Psychology Press

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• One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Pain, Future, Science

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

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• All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Sublime, Secret

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• There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.

  Rex Stout

  Book, Writing, Two

  "Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout". Book by John McAleer, p.3, 1983.

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• I once started a detective story to make money—but I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse!

  Mary McCarthy

  Character, Three, Stories

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• The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

  Raymond Chandler

  Jobs, Writing, Perfect

  Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.244, Vintage

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• Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.

  Rex Stout

  Stories, Lasts, Detectives

  "The New Invitation to Learning: The Essence of the Great Books of All Times". Book by Van Dore, p. 251, 1942.

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• There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

  Christopher Bollen

  Games, Creating, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

  Christopher Bollen

  Writing, Trying, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Where there's a will there's a detective story.

  Carolyn Wells

  Stories, Detectives

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• Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Fun, Views, Justice

  Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh (1999). “Thrones, Dominations”, p.126, Macmillan

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• I love facts and figures. It's like following a detective story, piecing together what's going on in the economy.

  Alan Greenspan

  Together, Stories, Detectives

  Source: www.today.com

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• If this "critical openminded attitude" ... is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can. ... Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating "dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning."

  Anthony Standen

  Attitude, Lying, Science

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• The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented his reputation, largely because of the movie version. Another battle of wills, it was the story of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of lesser composer Antonio Salieri.

  Bob Mondello

  Eye, Play, Names

  "British Playwright Peter Shaffer, Who Wrote 'Equus,' Dies At 90". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. June 6, 2016.

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• Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
  Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
  The only place success comes before work is a dictionary
  Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Wish, Detectives, Fiction

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• I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

  Rex Stout

  Mean, Thinking, Democracy

  "The New Invitation to Learning: The Essence of the Great Books of All Times". Book by Mark Van Doren (pp. 248 - 249), 1942.

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