Detective Quotations

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

I think the first thing is don't give up. If you love the craft. If you love being a detective and discovering who a character is and the detail of how they walk and what kind of shoes they wear and what did they do yesterday and what's important to them. I definitely advise actors to learn about the craft.

I've written a detective series myself, set in an imaginary, and slightly futuristic, Chinese city. The novels have an extremely tenuous relationship with the real world, since the hero is the city's Hell and ends up with a sidekick who is a demon.

I did my very first film with Kirk in Detective Story when he was the greatest, greatest star in the world. I fell in love with him, had a crush on him then.

Whether I build a character from the ground up or develop one, whether within my own copyright or in licensed work, I can step into that character's mind. It takes a kind of voluntary dissociation akin to method acting, military planning, marketing, or detective work: to think like the other guy and work out what he's going to do next.

In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.

I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.

A locked-room problem lies at the heart of my new novel, 'In The Morning I'll Be Gone,' in which an RUC detective has to find out whether a publican's daughter who fell off a table in a bar that was locked from the inside was in fact murdered.

I think every writer of detective fiction writing today has been influenced by Mr. Parker. I'm of a generation that followed Robert Parker, and it was impossible to read the genre and not be influenced by him.

It's rare for me to read any fiction. I almost only read nonfiction. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures. People who call reading detective fiction or eating dessert a guilty pleasure make me want to puke.

The point is that Robert Hunter is a post-modern poet who takes fragments that he inherited from other sources and melds them into new stories, ... What David Dodd has done is the detective work in tracing where those fragments came from.

We're going to continue our investigation into how an experienced detective working homicide could let this happen. It really falls on negligence ... and it's costing the taxpayers over $1 million in sanctions.

We have archeology on television, and I quite like it; its a sort of detective thing, but its really true, you know its there But its kind of slow on telly, it has this problem of, Weve been here three weeks on live television, and weve taken off about a millimeter of top soil so far Theres men with brushes and beards maybe theyve just got beards, Im not sure We found this and carbon-dated it to last Tuesday, so were very excited

She was a buxom grandmother noted for her detective stories, who gazed mournfully at the camera as if deploring either the bloodiness of her craft or the size of her advance.

My high school English teacher in junior year, Dr. Robert Parsons, assigned us some Poe stories, including 'The Black Cat' and 'The Purloined Letter.' Being an animal person, I had trouble with 'The Black Cat!' I got hooked instead by 'The Purloined Letter,' a Poe story with detective C. Auguste Dupin.

I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.

I am devoted to detective novels. They make such a nice change from my work.

I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy.

But they were gathering dust in some courthouse basement. These things were technically accessible, but unless you had a lot of time or could afford to hire a private detective to go look this stuff up, they were effectively secret from you.

God did it. God and Detective Wise. I can't praise them enough.

He was arrested as a result of good old-fashioned detective work. We believe everyone involved with this robbery is in custody.

I think the big issue is Kaplan - if the jury believes him we have a problem, if they don't, we're okay. Our expected defense would be Steve is a very talented detective with no motive and had no opportunity to do a lot of these things.

I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.

I remember watching 'Colombo' a lot with my dad. That was one of the first detective shows I remember watching. And I remember my dad turning to me - my dad loves to turn to me and explain why things are funny. He used to do that with 'Seinfeld' all the time. He did it with 'Colombo', too, set the scene.

Our argument is an informed public is the most important asset the county has. The public cannot be informed if every time someone talks to a news reporter there is a danger that some county detective is going to find out who they are and what they said.

Our community resource officers are heavily involved in this -- our school resource officer, our detective division -- (in) which individuals come out on different weekends.

Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

My mother takes full credit for my being a writer. Apparently, when she was carrying me, she said, she read an endless number of detective stories.

Justin's journey traces not only what Tessa was investigating, he's also playing detective about their relationship,

That's the trouble with playing a cutting-edge narcotics detective - you've got to wear what's topical at the moment. My kids tease me about outfits I was wearing last week, let alone in the eighties.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.

Most assaults on officers occur when a prisoner is being transported or moved about the building for questioning. Once a prisoner is in the holding area, they stay here. If a detective or officer has to interview one of them, it's done here.

We proved that the most important evidence against O.J. Simpson had supposedly been found in unusual places by a thoroughly racist LAPD detective-a detective who had been caught on audiotapes made years earlier admitting the LAPD planted evidence-a detective who for some unknown reason had been present in places he had no legitimate reason to be.

We're working on these one case at a time, doing old-fashioned gumshoe detective work. Every report we get, we have to treat as if it's potentially serious and the child is at risk.

We basically played detective for a whole day.

When I was growing up, my stepmother's sister was the chief detective in one of the adjoining towns, so she piqued my interest in crime.

While I was in jail, they handcuffed me and took me to a backroom, where a detective from the FBI and a Secret Service agent were, and they interrogated me for about three or four hours.

As the days turned into a year and then a decade, the family knew that no good detective work would ever be enough. It had to be DNA that was going to solve the case because there was nothing else.

Is he a plumber, a detective - who knows. It's so confusing.

I used to audition for 'NYPD Blue' quite a bit, so I had this stock New York detective character that I would bring in for all their auditions.

Detective fiction is an extremely moral genre, dealing with the strongest violation of the moral contract,

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.

'The Big Sleep' would have been a more effective study of nightmarish existence had the detective been more complicated and had more curiosity been shown about his sweetheart's relation to the crime.

A working detective has no hope of understanding what even experts who devote their lives to the study of criminal psychology can't figure out.

You really get to know these people. It almost becomes a detective story. Why is Brick like this?

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, he remarked with a smile. ""It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.

This is truly a detective story. We had events occur. We're trying to collect information today and project back to see what has caused this event.

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.

I told the detective that I got married because I wanted the baby to have his name. I wanted to be married when the baby came.

It's unfortunate, but we don't have any choice. We had a case here where an experienced detective made a mistake and the city and its taxpayers have to pay for it.

It just comes down to old-fashioned detective work. It's knocking on doors--asking questions.

It's a lot of relationship building, horse trading and detective work. When you work in this field you meet a lot of people, but they're not just going to take their pieces off the wall for you.

It's sad when they advertise a detective slot for $9.50 an hour. I pay my babysitter more.

The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertainingly, as possible.

The background to the arrests is the detective work which has been ongoing since the robbery on March 7th. Many different factors have meant we were able to round up this group.

Not every visit is going to be film room, practice. Some of the visits are going to be interviews and getting the detective work done.

It was one of the best pieces of detective work I have ever seen.

The van Gogh sleuthing is a delightful piece of detective work and certainly entirely reasonable as far as I can tell,

So as far as the homicide detective is concerned, that is the best you can get.

The FBI talked to the family down there (in Texas). They were cooperative from everything I've been told. Our detective hasn't gone down there. He's just being kept abreast of what's going on.

I'm not cut out to be a detective on 'Law & Order' - I laugh too easily.

I love the Swedish people for their detective novels, their archipelago, their sense of humor, their carbonated vodka, and most especially, for their wonderful hospitality.

In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song.

I -- like every other New York City detective -- was hoping that the allegations were not true. In light of the conviction, I am happy that the government did catch up with them... But this definitely is one of the most tarnished days in the history of the famous New York City detectives' gold shield.

I'm just sorry that the detective force arrested me and did not go to arrest Jose Carrasco until it was too late. That's what makes me sorry, because if he'd been arrested he would be alive,

I'm very proud of the work Detective Burnett did, ... He went out of his way to chase down several leads. As a result, several thousand dollars worth of items will be returned to their rightful owners.

I'm not surprised, given the tape-recorded evidence. Detective Dave Callahan did a great job of giving him the opportunity to back out of the scheme.

In other cases the proof is with a detective like John who would have a chat with you and get you to identify the item.

In fact, it could logically be argued that the man best qualified to review a detective story is an established detective-story writer.

I just spoke with the detective this evening and he indicated they are coming in very slow right now.

Citizens will not understand what a quality detective has passed through our doors, ... He cannot be duplicated. He was the one we went to when we had a very complex case, and that was not by mistake. We knew he could handle it and all the pressures that came with it.

I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience.

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many.

You could probably say that it is equivalent to a detective looking for a thief ....You look for clues and you follow the clues, many of which are wrong.

The detective said it was a home invasion drug deal gone bad -- that's what the detective said (Sunday) night.