Detectives Quotes - Page 4

• Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter.

  David Coleman

  Writing, Reporters

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• This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

  E. M. Forster

  Queens, Marching On, Appreciate

  "Aspects Of the Novel".

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• There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.

  Ben H. Winters

  Littles, Novelty, Solve

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• I love the rabbit hole. I spend a lot of time looking at images, Google mapping, etc. I also love to read court transcripts, FBI files, stuff like that. You go through vast, boring stretches, but the voices are always so fascinating and slowly a story begins to emerge. It's very much like playing detective.

  Zachary Lazar

  Voice, Google, Rabbits

  Source: therumpus.net

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• To be a good detective you must also think like a crook, an immoral, unethical or unlawful person

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Thinking, Crooks, Unlawful

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• Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Stories, Detective Fiction

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• [T]he historian and the detective have much in common.

  Ralph Davis

  History, Common, Historian

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• The instant they say something you don't expect or already know, you should drop into detective mode.

  Emmett Shear

  Should, Instant, Knows

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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, Facts

  Source: www.today.com

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• The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practicedby every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Shoes, Scientific Method

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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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• 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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• Operating in an unlit world, the unconscious mind is a brilliant detective.

  Jo Coudert

  Mind, World, Brilliant

  Jo Coudert (2003). “Advice from a Failure”, p.30, iUniverse

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• My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

  Alan Moore

  Life, Romantic, Cowboy

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• I chose No. 1 Ladies' Detective, or I'll say it chose me, and it was an absolute blessing, for the experience of being in Africa for seven months and learning so many different things, from languages to foods to greetings. On so many levels, it was an incredible experience.

  Jill Scott

  Blessing, Seven Months, Different

  "Jill Scott Talks FRINGE, Why She Wanted the Role, Hopes for Her Character, Being Part of the Final Season, Working with the Cast and Future Guest Spots". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. December 8, 2012.

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• The boy detective thinks, The only thing all men have in common with one another is their inherent capacity to make mistakes. He reasons, But there is wonder in the attempt, knowing we are all destined to fall short, but forgoing reason and fear time and time again so deliberately.

  Joe Meno

  Mistake, Fall, Boys

  Joe Meno (2006). “The Boy Detective Fails”, p.308, Akashic Books

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• The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

  Ross Macdonald

  Running, Vibrations, Surprise

  Ross Macdonald (1973). “On crime writing”

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• Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.

  Peter Medawar

  Philosophy, Science, Artist

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.

  Raymond Chandler

  Struggle, Two, Nine

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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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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• Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction.

  Stanley Bing

  Reading, Fiction, Way

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.

  Errol Morris

  Years, Years Ago, Used

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. April 23, 2008.

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• I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.

  Sara Paretsky

  Sex, Writing, Character

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Art, Brother, Book

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, David Stuart Davies (1998). “The Best of Sherlock Holmes”, p.200, Wordsworth Editions

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• There is no reason why the profoundest thoughts should not make easy and exciting reading. A profound thought is an exciting thing as exciting as a detective's deductions or hunches. The simpler the words in which a thought is expressed the more stimulating its effect.

  Eric Hoffer

  Reading, Profound, Reason Why

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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