Detective Stories Quotes:

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

- Steig Larsson

topic: Writing, Light, Stories, Detective Stories, Classical Literature

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

- Arthur C. Clarke

topic: Science, Political, Fiction, Detective Fiction, Detective Stories

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid...He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world

- Raymond Chandler

source: Raymond Chandler (2014). “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words”, p.69, Vintage

topic: Hero, Mean, Men, Being A Hero, Weathered

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

source: Source: www.teachingbooks.net

topic: Modern Novel, Play, Giving, Pacing, Detective Stories

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

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Book, Interesting, Shining, Detective Stories

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

topic: Stories, Done, Development, Rosetta Stone, Detective Stories

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

topic: Book, World, Detectives, Detective Stories, Anglers

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

topic: Book, Thinking, Friendly, Detective Stories, Isaac

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

topic: Thinking, Insightful, Stories, Detection, Detective Stories

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

topic: Passion, Detectives, Cinema, Detective Stories, Repressed

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

topic: Pain, People, Mind, Detective Stories

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

topic: Men, Sublime, Secret, Detective Stories

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

topic: Book, Writing, Two, Detective Stories

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

topic: Character, Stories, Detectives, Detective Stories

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

topic: Jobs, Writing, Perfect, Detective Stories

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

topic: Lasts, Detectives, Firsts, Detective Stories

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

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Games, Creating, Stories, Detective Stories

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

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Writing, Trying, Stories, Detective Stories

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

- Carolyn Wells

topic: Stories, Detectives, Detective Stories

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

source: Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh (1999). “Thrones, Dominations”, p.126, Macmillan

topic: Fun, Views, Justice, Stealth, Detective Stories

I love facts and figures. It's like following a detective story, piecing together what's going on in the economy.

- Alan Greenspan

source: Source: www.today.com

topic: Together, Stories, Detectives, Detective Stories

If this "critical openminded attitude" ... is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can. ... Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating "dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning."

- Anthony Standen

topic: Attitude, Lying, Science, Story Writers, Detective Stories

The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented his reputation, largely because of the movie version. Another battle of wills, it was the story of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of lesser composer Antonio Salieri.

- Bob Mondello

topic: Eye, Play, Names, Detective Stories, Salieri

Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. The only place success comes before work is a dictionary Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

- Arthur C. Clarke

topic: Wish, Detectives, Fiction, Detective Stories, Wrong Conclusion

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

- Rex Stout

source: "The New Invitation to Learning: The Essence of the Great Books of All Times". Book by Mark Van Doren (pp. 248 - 249), 1942.

topic: Mean, Thinking, Democracy, Detective Stories

In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.

- Bertrand Russell

topic: Detectives, Stories, Vicarious, Detective Stories

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.

- Stephen King

source: Interview with Phil Konstantin, americanindian.net. July 1987.

topic: Writing, Horror Stories, Guy, Boogie, Goblin

Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the "Secret Annexe." The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.

- Anne Frank

topic: War, Thinking, People, Detective Stories

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

topic: Hunting, Serial Killer, Looks, Sequels, Detective Stories

make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

topic: Mistake, Expression, Stories, Detective Stories, Mystery Novels

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

topic: Book, Writing, Long, Detective Stories, Box Of Chocolates

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

- V. S. Pritchett

topic: Art, Yawning, Stories, Detective Stories

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

topic: Thinking, Historical, Important, Da Vinci Code, Detective Stories

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

topic: Thinking, Numbers, Black, Detective Stories

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

topic: Book, Average, Stories, Detective Stories, Above Average

I believe there's a landscape that exists underneath everything that we can see in present-day stuff. And I think that makes life kind of a detective story.

- Stephen Hopkins

source: Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

topic: Believe, Thinking, Stories, Detective Stories

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

- Rex Stout

topic: Games, Detectives, Balls, Detective Stories

Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.

- Dashiell Hammett

source: Dashiell Hammett (1965). “The novels of Dashiell Hammett”

topic: Worry, Stories, Tonight, Detective Stories, Your Pretty

You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.

- Agatha Christie

topic: Reading, Doubt, Stories, Detective Stories

I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.

- Simone de Beauvoir

topic: Balance, Stories, Detectives, Detective Stories

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

topic: Men, Alive, Detectives, Detective Stories

I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

source: Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “The Nine Tailors”, p.486, Open Road Media

topic: Jobs, Writing, Thinking, Detective Stories

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

topic: Doe, Stories, Detectives, Detective Stories

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

- Agatha Christie

topic: New York, Writing, Cities, Detective Work, Hercule Poirot

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

- Rex Stout

topic: Book, Home, Hands, Detective Stories, Unanswered

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

topic: Writing, Play, Interesting, Detective Stories

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

- Jeffery Deaver

topic: Stories, Detectives, Tradition, Detective Stories, Forensics

Boredom has been used as a technique, it is a device. In Zen, boredom is used as a device: you are bored to death, and you are not allowed to escape. You are not to go outside, you are not to entertain yourself, you are not to do, you are not to talk, you are not to read novels and detective stories. No thrill. No possibility to escape anywhere.

- Rajneesh

topic: Boredom, Technique, Thrill, Bored To Death, Detective Stories

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

- P. D. James

source: Quoted in Face, Dec. 1986

topic: Order, Restoration, Stories, Detective Stories