S. S. Van Dine famous quotes

Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Criminals #Murder #Bizarre

There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better.
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Detectives #Novel

There are few punishments too severe for a popular novel writer,
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Punishment #Novel

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

Only, as long as we're going insane we may as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Long #Insane #May

Giving full rein to one's cynicism as one goes along produces a normal outlet and maintains an emotional equilibrium.
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Emotional #Giving #Normal

It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers--men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton--have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times--a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime.
-- S. S. Van Dine

#Book #Unique #Men

Tattooed men who are not behind bars are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If someone who is tattooed dies in freedom, then he does so a few years before he would have committed murder.

Criminals were coming to Chechnya from all over the world - they did not have a place in their own countries. But they could live perfectly well in Chechnya.

We cannot say that if a child is badly nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.

It is ordinarily said that criminal law is designed to protect property and to protect persons, and if society's only interest in controlling sex behavior were to protect persons, then the criminal codes concerned with assault and battery should provide adequate protection. The fact that there is a body of sex laws which is apart from the laws protecting persons is evidence of their distinct function, namely that of protecting custom.

Attention must be given to the penal consequences of violations of the right to peace, including the punishment by domestic courts or in due time by the International Criminal Court of those who have engaged in aggression and propaganda for war.

I feel like I'll never get over red carpets. They're so bizarre and awkward.

My ex-husband happens to be one of the most gifted moviemakers. And what is so bizarre about working with someone like that? I guess it is bizarre to be good friends with your ex-husband.

I don't ever want to do anything that's obvious, and I also want to find ways to do things that are extremely new and exciting and can make sense in bizarre ways. I always want things to make sense in really bizarre ways.

To me, the more bizarre the character, the more I'm attracted to it,

I could easily live in a world populated with disjunctive, bizarre things...