Top 100 Detective Quotes
#1. He was a detective, but he didn't detect anything. It fell into his lap, already broken,
every time.
Jodi Picoult
#2. time. He also discovered that the burglar was still inside. It was this discovery that ultimately brought Detective Harry Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, to the Three Kings Pawnshop.
Michael Connelly
#3. Now the tea began to do its work- as it always did- and the world that only a few minutes previously had seemed so bleak started to seem less so.
Alexander McCall Smith
#4. controversial performance as a corrupt detective in Training Day - would be seen holding the Oscar for best actor, almost four decades after Poitier's
Wil Haygood
#5. Flowers are fragile and ephemeral ... Even if you meant to protect them with a surrounding fence from wind and rain, they would die without sunlight ... and a spindly fence has no power against a strong wind. - Haibara Ai
Gosho Aoyama
#6. When I walk between the rain drops, I never get wet.' Taken from ENEMY WITHIN, due out next year
Andrew Hixson
#7. What I love - and I'm a journalist - and what I love is finding hidden patterns; I love being a data detective.
David McCandless
#8. Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really, I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers. -Dexter
Jeff Lindsay
#9. When you are playing a detective, particularly as a woman, you either are going to embrace the fact that it's a man's world you are jumping into, or you're going to ignore it.
Roberto Orci
#10. I don't believe for one moment that I killed him [ ... ] But if I didn't, somebody else did. I must appoint myself Investigator. I must catch this malefactor, this pig. And if at any time it looks as if I am going to catch myself, I can always accept my resignation.
Pamela Branch
#11. 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
#12. Donovan Caine wanted me, but he wasn't strong enough to accept me. Not my past, not my strength, not the woman I was. Bitter disappointment filled me, replacing my rage, but I forced myself to ask the final question I wanted an answer to ...
Jennifer Estep
#13. Honey, what's the Detective doing here?"
"Tag, you never told me Wayne was so funny!"
"Wayne?"
"That's me. Most detectives also have first names.
Jules Cassard
#14. We ran both the courier service and a detective agency from the same office, and had phone apps for both. Basically, we're Uber for parcels and mysteries.
Jay Stringer
#15. She and I are as far apart as the stars in the sky and the soles of my feet." Detective Sean Ryan ~Deception on Sable Hill by Shelley Gray
Shelley Gray
#16. Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre.
Tyler Cowen
#17. Yes, Detective Mitchell James Lawson was stubborn. More stubborn than me. Damn.
Kristen Ashley
#18. Andrea raised her eyebrows. "Look at you, all high-speed."
"Yeah, you'd think I was a detective or something."
Andrea held her hand out. "You'll jinx it.
Ilona Andrews
#19. First rule of being a detective,' the Doctor said a he knocked on the door, 'is to observe. Observe the obvious, and observe the not-so-obvious. Observing the not-so-obvious is not as easy as observing the obvious, but if it were easy everyone would be at it.
Derek Landy
#20. I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.
Patrick Modiano
#21. Mars and Venus are at it again. This time, Hephaestus is standing by with a private detective, a photographer, and a lawyer.
Mason Cooley
#22. 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
#23. 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
#25. Would you like some more pancakes? Annie asked. I could tell that Annie was a smart girl. I hate to eat on the job. But I must keep up my strength.
Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
#26. Holden shot him in the throat. Somewhere in his brain stem, Detective Miller nodded in approval.
James S.A. Corey
#27. It seems you can't go anywhere today without seeing some popular culture rendition of Vampyres. I went into a bookstore a few weeks ago and there was an entire section devoted to Teenage Paranormal Romance. Can you imagine?
Abramelin Keldor
#28. Detective, have you ever considered the fact that violence is the recourse of the uncivilised man?" Skulduggery looked back. "I'm sophisticated, charming, suave and debonair, Professor. But I have never claimed to be civilised.
Derek Landy
#29. In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everyone will be in a situation where he has to play detective.
Walter Benjamin
#30. Wales smiled sadly. "Dig, dig, clear every little detail, that's a detective's life. A crime is like an iceberg, one-tenth showing and nine-tenths hidden.
Ed Lacy
#31. Now that we can buy anything we want we seem to read detective stories.
Elizabeth Savage
#32. Sam's eyes wandered up to the camera again. "Are we being recorded?" "Yes." "Who's watching us right now?" The detective sighed. "A couple of really experienced police officers. Actually, I have no idea. Wave if you want to." Sam lifted a hand and wiggled a few fingers.
Jennifer Hillier
#33. Persistence is often a detective's greatest ally.
Lara Adrian
#34. When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.
Judy Blume
#35. To be a good detective you must also think like a crook, an immoral, unethical or unlawful person
Robert Kiyosaki
#36. You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
Raymond Chandler
#37. A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.
Gilbert N. Lewis
#38. When I auditioned with Anthony Minghella (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), I loved the audition process, although I hated him for it. Because he had me audition six times for that role. Maybe three hours each. He wanted to see how quickly I could vary.
Jill Scott
#39. I did my very first film with Kirk in Detective Story when he was the greatest, greatest star in the world. I fell in love with him, had a crush on him then.
Lee Grant
#40. 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
#41. Why hadn't she been a detective instead of a goddamn stupid third-class civil rights lawyer? She hated the law. It took an aggressive, assertive personality. She didn't have it. She had a sneaky, sly, shy, squamous personality. She had French diseases of the soul.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#42. Matthew kept hinting that Strike was somehow a fake. He seemed to feel that being a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tamer; that real people did not do such things.
Robert Galbraith
#43. I sat down at the table, took a deep breath, smiled at Detective Masterson, and nodded at Deputy Slalom. It was going to be a great summer. Normal.
Erynn Mangum
#44. Paranoid can also be defined as "carefully smart"! Almost every episode of SVU is based on a true story; I'd watched my fill until they moronically cut Detective Stabler's fine-ass character.
Angela Graham
#45. 'True Detective' is a densely layered work with resonant details and symbology and rich characterization under the guise of one of the forms of this mystery genre. That's what we shoot for.
Nic Pizzolatto
#46. Good and evil," Nick said. "Yin and yang. Male and female. Life and death. The dualities that make us human. As though our lives play out on an immense balance scale - move one way, the scale tips to the left, but move the other, and it swings around to the right.
Abramelin Keldor
#47. Like the name of a cartoon Belgian detective said in a Scottish accent, it's 10:10.'11 It
Alan Partridge
#48. I'm not a detective from Baker Street or an old lady who solves crimes while she's knitting in an easy chair. I'm just a book girl. So I can't make a deduction, only take a flight of fancy
er, forget I said that. I meant, I can only take a guess.
Mizuki Nomura
#49. You do know I'm not psychic, right?'
Dash looked down at her. 'Joy...you do know that normal people don't see ghosts, right?
Amy Andrews
#50. The detective's highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favours under the guise of conferring them!
Agatha Christie
#51. I'll tell you something else too; by the time we're through we shall have had all we can stand of this North woman. I wouldn't mind betting she thinks we have nothing better to do than run around in circles while she gets on with this three-act problem play of hers.
Georgette Heyer
#52. The perfectly measured burr of a dispassionate detective had suddenly changed into the explosive boom of a take-no-shit street cop.
Suffice it to say, I froze.
Cleo Coyle
#53. Getting to do what I think was my fifth BBC drama with Nikki Amuka-Bird - we've done 'Shoot The Messenger,' 'Five Days,' 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' 'Born Equal' and now 'Small Island' - was another highlight for me. And filming in Jamaica was great, too.
David Oyelowo
#54. With an expression that could be mistaken for fear, Detective Duke shivered, but not of terror, more so a shiver of admiration. This was his first encounter with angels. In humility, he hid his face from them.
T.K. Ware
#55. More than 100 years after he first appeared, Holmes remains the template for the fictional detective.
Mark Billingham
#56. Our job involves looking at things that people usually can't see.
Fuminori Nakamura
#57. In case, I would prefer to say, that some circumstances should strike me in a different light to the one in which it struck you. Human reactions vary and so does human experience.
~Hercule Poirot
Agatha Christie
#58. Mr. Beck, I'm Detective Reynolds," she said, holding out her hand. Sebastian eyed it warily. " You going to actually break my finger this time?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at her. She rolled her eyes at him. " Not if I don't have to.
Andria Large
#60. The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.
V.S. Pritchett
#61. Detective stories are mostly bunkum ... But they amuse people ... And they're useful sometimes.
Agatha Christie
#63. Dude, want to give me a little room here?" "No. I like being close to you." Detective Johnson ran one long finger slowly down Day's chest. "Well fuckin' unlike it." They both jumped at the sound of God's gruff voice. God
A.E. Via
#64. I love the French detective series 'Spiral.' It's quite brutal to watch, but I'm already hooked.
Robert Winston
#65. Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.
Otto Penzler
#66. What description of clouds and sunsets was to the old novelist, description of scientific apparatus and methods is to the modern Scientific Detective writer.
Hugo Gernsback
#67. I play a detective, very close to myself actually.
Jon Voight
#68. There is little novelty in the detective who cannot solve himself.
Ben H. Winters
#69. Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?"
I felt it. I took it easy.
Ross Macdonald
#70. I included receipts, faxes, newspaper clippings, all sorts of things. I've read novels composed entirely of emails or letters, but not assembled across this kind of mix of materials. I wanted to create the feeling of a detective going through a box of clues.
Brian Pinkerton
#71. If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'
Nic Pizzolatto
#72. Even as I was writing 'Empire State,' I knew there were more adventures for the main character, private detective Rad Bradley, to have. I also knew that the world was far larger than what I'd presented in book one.
Adam Christopher
#73. (sergeant thinking about an excellent detective who's threatening to quit)
For a squad sergeant, having Worden working for you was like having sex: When it was good it was great and even when it wasn't so hot, it was still pretty damn good.
David Simon
#74. The instant Isabella Cortez left the safety of the FBI building, goose bumps skittered across her skin and her senses went on high alert.
Elizabeth Heiter
#75. Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.
Rex Stout
#76. I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories.
Ruth Rendell
#77. I would like it to be said that I was a good writer of detective and thriller stories.
Agatha Christie
#78. If everything comes in your way just the way you wanted them to ,then you're probably in the wrong lane.
ARKOPAUL
#79. When I saw the Twilight movies I thought being a Vampyre was so romantic. When my friends decided to be Vampyres it was so cool. We would do anything to be like Dwayne and Maria and the rest. I got what I wished for but I have no life to enjoy it with.
Abramelin Keldor
#80. A good detective not only has to be intelligent, persevering and prepared to do enless boring routine work, he also needs one other quality: Intuition. I see it rather as the ability to make connections which are there but are not immediately apparent. Subterranean connections.
Dorothy Simpson
#81. My glass is not only half-empty, I'm convinced someone spit in it.
Judy Nichols
#82. Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.
Philip Zaleski
#83. Stay strong," said the detective. "They respect strength."
What the hell was she supposed to do? Break a chair? Bench-press a Volvo?
Kathy Lyons
#84. Steven stared at the detective's gun and realized there was no escape. He had an emotional meltdown, letting his true feelings spill out of him.
Amelia Morgan
#85. I will only write the novel, if I can solve the crime
Andrew Hixson
#86. I'm usually late to the game on shows and watch them after they've aired. But I love 'House of Cards,' 'The Killing,' 'Orange Is the New Black,' loved 'True Detective,' and 'Arrested Development' when it was on. Also 'The Wire,' though I was way late to the game on that.
Finn Wittrock
#87. If the video camera was loaded with a tape, it was never seen. If Detective Smith made a report of the interview, it was never produced in the legal proceedings that followed.
John Grisham
#89. It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.
Agatha Christie
#90. Jamadars and bheesties,' said the helmsman. 'Not to mention the major-domos, lordly lamplighters and twisted firestarters.' 'Twisted firestarters?' enquired the detective. 'I told you not to mention them.
Robert Rankin
#91. Allow me to introduce myself,
the name is Brown, Jane Brown,
and I am the greatest detective the world
has ever seen. I'm known to solve multiple cases,
on any given day, without even breaking a sweat.
In fact, I am working on one now.
A.J. DeJong
#92. Just the night before, a puma's howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn't get any richer than that.
Ed Lynskey
#93. If there was one thing which Sloan had learned over the years it was that you should never underestimate the element of luck in detective work.
Catherine Aird
#94. 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
#95. Moriston House is really quite beautiful. No wonder everyone wants to be murdered here.
--Roberta "Bobbie" Aldridge
Jennifer A. Girardin
#96. The young detective possessed that peculiar ability more common to elderly men, which produces negative energy around electrical equipment, turning even the most basic appliances into weapons of destruction.
Christopher Fowler
#97. I began to get really keen, for every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
John Buchan
#98. Fish had already told both Wertham and Detective King that, in addition to shoving needles inside his body, he liked to soak pieces of cotton in alcohol, cram them up his rectum, and set fire to them.
Harold Schechter
#99. No. I just don't want to be a detective. They figure out what happened after the fact, when it's too late. I want to prevent it from happening.
Jennifer Echols
#100. 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
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