Noir Mystery Quotes

#1. Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Motherless Brooklyn,' is no movie-of-the-week novelty grafted onto a noir mystery. Maybe his Tourette's is a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with depth, with soul.

Gary Krist

#2. Word Powers:
A beautiful bitch has four legs, not two. Even terms of, so called, endearment have unintended manifestations. Guard your grill.

T.F. Hodge

#3. From Chapter 1:
"You're not a local." I paused, unsure. "Or are you?"
"Sort of. Randall Van Dotson is my dad. I'm Rennie."
After tossing her head that coy, sweet way girls do, she gave me a candid appraisal.

Ed Lynskey

#4. If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don't want to dance, then you're going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.

Sherman Alexie

#5. She killed to get the dream she wanted, then found out it didn't want her back.

Robyn Hugo McIntyre

#6. Ah ha!' the Doc screeched suddenly, wheeling around. 'The salicylic acid! Maybe it SHOULD have been heated first!

Clare Havens

#7. The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.

Raymond Chandler

#8. About Tommy, you went through your whole life craving these little pockets of time and missing them for more time than you had them.

Lily Gardner

#9. Simon's brain tried to comprehend the situation. 'Was an international supermodel really holding Doc Gutson, leader of the infamous Bloodworth Gang, captive?

Clare Havens

#10. She was a cute as a washtub.

Raymond Chandler

#11. There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby.

Lily Gardner

#12. The lady in the liquor store sold me a fifth of whiskey and the landlord's name without taking her eyes off the book she was reading.

Andrew Cotto

#13. That was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity.

Lily Gardner

#14. A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.

Raymond Chandler

#15. My wife accuses me - and she's probably right - that I'm sometimes oversensitive.

Joe Torre

#16. After the creation of credit by banks, the birth of the bond was the second great revolution in the ascent of money.

Niall Ferguson

#17. From Chapter 1:
The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I'd never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should've learned better.

Ed Lynskey

#18. Heaven wouldn't be like this earth, this tormented earth ruled by evil forces that tossed humanity to and fro like a slow clown in a two-bit rodeo.

Joe LaFlam

#19. I couldn't see why it shouldn't be my one hundred dollars.

Walter Mosley

#20. In America, they have specialist mystery book stores with whole sections devoted to cat mysteries, golf mysteries, quilting mysteries. It's a hugely broad genre from the darkest noir to tales of a 19th-century vet who solves crimes, thanks to his talking cat.

Mark Billingham

#21. The biggest mistake you can make is thinking you know who you are.

J.P. Bloch

#22. Miss Leary, do you mean to insinuate that I should go encouraging homo-sex-uality amongst these corpses?

William Lindsay Gresham

#23. In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin's roofline a bursting fireball.

Ed Lynskey

#24. The Land of Civilian was a dry bitter place where you sat in your car staring at drawn curtains and closed doors for hours on end, and where everything was a big, freaking secret.

Lily Gardner

#25. The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne

Laurie Stevens

#26. 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

#27. We need to reform the health code so that people are incentivized to buy their own health insurance rather than have to get it through an employer.

Monica Crowley

#28. There are a few rules in investigations, and one is to never cringe at the person's appearance that you're about to pump for info.

Ruth Bainbridge

#29. Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both.

V. Alexander