Detective Stories Quotes - Page 2

• In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

  Bertrand Russell

  Detectives, Stories, Vicarious

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• I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Horror Stories, Guy

  Interview with Phil Konstantin, americanindian.net. July 1987.

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• Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

  Anne Frank

  Thinking, People, Interesting

  Anne Frank, General Press (2016). “The Diary of a Young Girl”, p.127, GENERAL PRESS

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• Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

  Anne Frank

  War, Thinking, People

  Anne Frank (1954). “The Diary of Anne Frank”, Pan

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• If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.

  Albert Brooks

  Hunting, Serial Killer, Looks

  "Interview: Albert Brooks Sees Into the Future" by Marshall Fine, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 3, 2011.

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• make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Mistake, Expression, Stories

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• When I feel that I'm going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.

  Carolyn Wells

  Book, Writing, Long

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• Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Art, Yawning, Stories

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• I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Thinking, Historical, Important

  "Bigger than Dan Brown" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2005.

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• American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.

  Chester Himes

  Thinking, Numbers, Black

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• The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does.... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.

  Raymond Chandler

  Book, Average, Doe

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• I believe there's a landscape that exists underneath everything that we can see in present-day stuff. And I think that makes life kind of a detective story.

  Stephen Hopkins

  Believe, Thinking, Stories

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

  Rex Stout

  Games, Balls, Stories

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• Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.

  Dashiell Hammett

  Worry, Stories, Tonight

  Dashiell Hammett (1965). “The novels of Dashiell Hammett”

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• You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.

  Agatha Christie

  Reading, Doubt, Stories

  Agatha Christie (1986). “5 Complete Novels of Murder and Detection”, Wings

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• I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Balance, Stories, Detectives

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• A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Alive, Detectives

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• I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jobs, Writing, Thinking

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “The Nine Tailors”, p.486, Open Road Media

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• There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Doe, Stories, Detectives

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• It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

  Agatha Christie

  New York, Writing, Cities

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

  Rex Stout

  Book, Home, Hands

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• What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

  Dashiell Hammett

  Writing, Play, Interesting

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• Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

  Jeffery Deaver

  Stories, Detectives, Tradition

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• Boredom has been used as a technique, it is a device. In Zen, boredom is used as a device: you are bored to death, and you are not allowed to escape. You are not to go outside, you are not to entertain yourself, you are not to do, you are not to talk, you are not to read novels and detective stories. No thrill. No possibility to escape anywhere.

  Rajneesh

  Boredom, Technique, Thrill

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• What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

  P. D. James

  Order, Restoration, Stories

  Quoted in Face, Dec. 1986

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