Detectives Quotes - Page 6

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

  V. S. Pritchett

  Art, Yawning, Stories

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• If the detective should suffer overmuch from the artistic temperament, and his fellow lodger should dwell overlong upon the fairness of a wrist or the timber of a feminine voice, so much the better for us. Literature never produced a relationship more symbiotic nor a warmer and more timeless friendship.

  Loren D. Estleman

  Voice, Suffering, Literature

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• In the summer of 2010, I was working on a version of "True Detective" that I was thinking might be my next novel, and it was told in these two first-person voices; Cohle and Hart's voices.

  Nic Pizzolatto

  Summer, Thinking, Two

  "'True Detective' creator on his gripping new HBO series". Interview with Alan Sepinwall, uproxx.com. January 7, 2014.

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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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• I made True Detective like it was going to be the only thing I ever made for television. So put in everything and the kitchen sink. Everything.

  Nic Pizzolatto

  Kitchen, Television, Made

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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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• Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma, Two, White

  Alexander McCall Smith (2008). “The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. 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.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Jobs, Book, Character

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• Being a homicide detective ca be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later - after weeks or months - they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over the grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the office who is left with the investigation.

  Steig Larsson

  Jobs, Night, Thinking

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• You be sure to throw the book at him, you hear me? I feel violated, Detective. Violated." "I'll throw this table at you if you don't give us the names we're looking for.

  Derek Landy

  Book, Names, Giving

  Derek Landy (2015). “Skulduggery Pleasant:”, p.79, HarperCollins UK

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• Garrett must have sensed I was awake. "Hey Detective," he said to Uncle Bob, who was now trudging across the grating toward us. "I think we're losing her. I have no choice but to perform mouth-to-mouth." "Don't you dare," I said, my lids still in lockdown.

  Darynda Jones

  Uncles, Thinking, Choices

  Darynda Jones (2011). “First Grave on the Right”, p.127, Macmillan

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• Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?” [Finn] asked in a hopeful voice. I arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren't enough?” “I’m a growing boy,” Finn said in a sincere tone. “I need my vitamins.” Bria snorted. “The only thing that’s growing on you, Lane, is your ego.” Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. “Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective.

  Jennifer Estep

  Sweet, Coffee, Mean

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• In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for True Detective was one of them.

  Nic Pizzolatto

  Summer, Writing, Ideas

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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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• These detective series on TV always end at precisely the right moment-after the criminal is arrested and before the court turns him loose.

  Robert Orben

  Punishment, Tvs, Criminals

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• The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.

  Joe Navarro

  People, Drs, Problem

  Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins (2009). “What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People”, p.8, Harper Collins

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• These days we don’t have to fit into something other people think we are. We’ve leveled the playing field, life is inclusive. I’m a mom, sex detective, wife, fearless, gentle — we can now, with grace, be all of what we are.

  Mariska Hargitay

  Mom, Sex, Thinking

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• It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Book, Gun, Men

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

  Mary Lee Settle

  Morning, Book, Dope

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• Who am I that I should urge these missionaries to confess their sins in public, when, for all I know, they may be living nearer to God than I am? The Spirit of God does not need me to act as His detective.

  Jonathan Goforth

  Doe, Needs, May

  Jonathan Goforth (0101). “"By my Spirit"”, p.8, Solid Christian Books

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• Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

  Raymond Chandler

  Gun, Men, Thinking

  "The Simple Art of Murder". Book by Raymond Chandler (Introduction), 1950.

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• A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house… The law will of necessity have Indus[tr]ial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state.

  Richard E. Byrd

  Home, Eye, Army

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• A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

  S. S. Van Dine

  Character, Successful, Issues

  S. S. Van Dine (2015). “Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories”, p.6, Booklassic

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• The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Novelists, Stories

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• We would never call inexplicable little insights hunches, for fear of drawing the universe's attention. But they happened, and you knew you had been in the proximity of one that had come through if you saw a detective kiss his or her fingers and touch his or her chest where a pendant to Warsha, patron saint of inexplicable inspirations, would, theoretically, hang.

  China Mieville

  Life, Inspiration, Kissing

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