Detective Stories Quotes

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

  Carolyn Wells

  Stories, Detectives

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

  V. S. Pritchett

  Art, Yawning, Stories

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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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