Crime Quotes

You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions.”Mary’s eyes darkened and she looked away.“Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking ‘why’ ‘who’ and making me think about my wasted life.

~ Olga Núñez Miret

It’s…The only way I can get on with my life is by forgetting what went on before. Dave used to tell me that I didn’t have control over what the bastard of my father did to me, and that he’d been punished for it, and I might as well concentrate on the rest of my life, because over that…I had some control and I could decide what to do. I could change it over; I could become anything I wanted if I just tried hard enough.

~ Olga Núñez Miret

Eve: She completely eye-fucked you. Roarke: I know. I feel so cheap and used. Eve: Shit. You got off on it. Men always do. Roarke: True enough, which is why we're so often cheap and used.

~ J.d. Robb

I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.

~ Mario Puzo

How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate?

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Drug addicts driven to crime to finance their drug addiction are not often inclined toward violent crime. Violence requires all different kinds of energy, and most drug addicts like to expend their energy not on their professional crime but on what their professional crime lets them afford. Drug addicts are often burglars, therefore.

~ David Foster Wallace

Eve: Where's Mister Scary?Roarke: Summerset has the night off.Eve: You mean the house is Summerset-free? Damn shame we have to waste it with work.

~ J.d. Robb

Alien Affairs. Bad name I always thought, makes it sound like they're shagging them rather than investigating them.

~ Peter F. Hamilton

Al... You ever kill anybody? In the United States? Because I know you mean it and everything, but I know these guys better than I know you. They're soldiers, that's all. No questions, no time to ask, no talk. Cops are worse, and less predictable. When you pull a gun, you've gotta be ready to kill somebody, and I'm telling you it's better to run.

~ Phillip Rock

He's prowling back and forth like a lion with distemper now. There's a shiny streak down one side of his face. I shouldn't have let her go ahead - I ought to be hung! Something's gone wrong. I can't stand this any more! he says with a choked sound. I'm starting now -But how are you -Spring for it and fire as I go if they try to stop me. And then as he barges out, the fat lady waddling solicitously after him, Stay there; take it if she calls - tell her I'm on the way-He plunges straight at the street-door from all the way back in the hall, like a fullback headed for a touchdown. That's the best way. Gun bedded in his pocket, but hand gripping it ready to let fly through lining and all. He slaps the door out of his way without slowing and skitters out along the building, head and shoulders defensively lowered.It *was* the taxi, you bet. No sound from it, at least not at this distance, just a thin bluish haze slowly spreading out around it that might be gas-fumes if its engine were turning; and at his end a long row of un-colored spurts - of dust and stone-splinters - following him along the wall of the flat he's tearing away from. Each succeeding one a half yard too far behind him, smacking into where he was a second ago. And they never catch up. (Jane Brown's Body)

~ Cornell Woolrich

She had signed her own death-warrant. He kept telling himself over and over that he was not to blame, she had brought it on herself. He had never seen the man. He knew there was one. He had known for six weeks now. Little things had told him. One day he came home and there was a cigar-butt in an ashtray, still moist at one end, still warm at the other. There were gasoline-drippings on the asphalt in front of their house, and they didn't own a car. And it wouldn't be a delivery-vehicle, because the drippings showed it had stood there a long time, an hour or more. And once he had actually glimpsed it, just rounding the far corner as he got off the bus two blocks down the other way. A second-hand Ford. She was often very flustered when he came home, hardly seemed to know what she was doing or saying at all.He pretended not to see any of these things; he was that type of man, Stapp, he didn't bring his hates or grudges out into the open where they had a chance to heal. He nursed them in the darkness of his mind. That's a dangerous kind of a man.If he had been honest with himself, he would have had to admit that this mysterious afternoon caller was just the excuse he gave himself, that he'd daydreamed of getting rid of her long before there was any reason to, that there had been something in him for years past now urging Kill, kill, kill. Maybe ever since that time he'd been treated at the hospital for a concussion.(Three O'Clock)

~ Cornell Woolrich

And he's alone there, with the unconscious pilot lying a little way off for company, and some other guy he's never even seen, only spoken to over the radio.He wants to sleep so badly - dying they call it - and he can't. Something's bothering him to keep him awake. (Jane Brown's Body)

~ Cornell Woolrich

The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled one from around the racketeer's collar.Tereshko is trembling with his anger. 'Now him again!' he protests, as though at an injustice. 'All they do is die and then get up and walk around again! What'sa matter, you guys using spitballs for slugs? No, don't kick at him, that'll never do it - I think the guy has nine lives!' (Jane Brown's Body)

~ Cornell Woolrich

We thought we were invincible and Dominic proved us all wrong,” - Jesse Carlisle

~ Nina D'angelo

One must live with all, e'en if life be hell: Crime makes shame, not monetary stricture

~ Multatuli

Then Cynthia looked at him and smiled, and he knew he couldn’t possibly resist her, no matter what she had done. It felt as though the two of them had just stripped naked and dived off a high cliff over a beautiful river. The water below looked cool and inviting. But what if it was only six inches deep?

~ Robert Burton Robinson

Rape is a more heinous crime than murder since the rape victim dies throughout the period she lives.

~ Amit Abraham

Punishment creates crime.

~ Silvia Hartmann

No one mentioned the sad piece of tinsel, naked in places, hanging across the chimneybreast, nor that Twelfth Night was a week ago. No one mentioned the two Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. No one mentioned them because inside they were blank.

~ Andrew Barrett

Stay home and the crooks win. They get the night, by default and concession, the night which should rightly belong to all of us.

~ Claire Cross

There was noise in the corridor outside Alice’s office; and though it was nothing of concern, they separated. Roger stood, fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, admiring prints on the wall that held no interest for him. The noise was Melanie, but her voice, a length of razor wire wrapped in a soufflé, eventually faded.

~ Andrew Barrett

As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of.

~ Edward Bellamy

And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It must, it must be a wrong number, somebody wanted the Information Booth or-! It must have been audible outside, with all I had the slide partly closed. One of the redcaps passing by turned, looked over, then started coming across toward where I was. To get rid of him I picked up the receiver, put it to my ear.'You'd better come out now, time's up,' a flat, deadly voice said. 'They're calling your train, but you're not getting on that one - or any other.''Wh-where are talking from?''The next booth to yours,' the voice jeered. 'You forgot the glass inserts only reach halfway down.'The connection broke and a man's looming figure was shadowing the glass in front of my eyes, before I could even get the receiver back on the hook. I dropped it full-length, tensed my right arm to pound it through his face as soon as I shoved the glass aside. He had a revolver-bore for a top vest-button, trained on me. Two more had shown up behind him, from which direction I hadn't noticed. It was very dark in the booth now, their collective silhouettes shut out all the daylight. The station and all its friendly bustle was blotted out, had receded into the far background, a thousand miles away for all the help it could give me. I slapped the glass wearily aside, came slowly out.One of them flashed a badge - maybe Crow had loaned him his for the occasion. 'You're being arrested for putting slugs in that phone. It won't do any good to raise your voice and shriek for help, try to tell people different. But suit yourself.'I knew that as well as he; heads turned to stare after us by the dozens as they started with me in their midst through the station's main-level. But not one in all that crowd would have dared interfere with what they mistook for a legitimate arrest in the line of duty. The one with the badge kept it conspicuously tilted in his upturned palm, at sight of which the frozen onlookers slowly parted, made way for us through their midst. I was being led to my doom in full view of scores of people. (Graves For The Living)

~ Cornell Woolrich

When a beautiful blonde asks, you don't say no.

~ V.t. Davy

@The darkest and most complex novel in (the Murdoch) series.

~ Maureen Jennings

This may not be art as art commonly goes; the lack of discipline, of control, would seem to rule it out of that category. And yet Woolrich's lack of control over emotions is a crucial element in his work, not only because it intensifies the fragility and momentariness of love but also because it tears away the comfortable belief, evident in some of the greatest works of the human imagination such as Oedipus Rex, that nobility in the face of nothingness is possible. And if Woolrich's work is not art as commonly understood, there is an art beyond art, whose form is not the novel or story but the scream; and of this art Woolrich is beyond doubt a master. (Introduction)

~ Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's after image imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscure of dreams. Though their bodies would heal, their souls had sustained a damage beyond compensation

~ Pat Conroy

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

~ Thomas Hobbes

The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.

~ Mario Puzo

Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body. After she unbuckled her seat belt, after she pulled a stick pen from the rubber band on the sun visor, after her long fingers brushed her hip to feel the comfort of her service piece, what she always did was pause. Not long. Just the length of a slow deep breath. That's all it took for her to remember the one thing she will never forget. Another body waited. She drew the breath. And when she could feel the raw edges of the hole that had been blown in her life, Detective Nikki Heat was ready. She opened the car door and went to work . . . Heat could have made it easier on herself by parking closer, but this was another of her rituals: the walk up. Every crime scene was a flavor of chaos, and these two hundred feet afforded the detective her only chance to fill the clean slate with her own impressions.

~ Richard Castle

There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell.There's Heaven then there's Hell niggasOne day your cruisin' in your seven,Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies,Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' upHit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicleEverything was all good just a week ago'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you?Ready to start snitchin' ain't you?I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't youAside from the fast carsHoneys that shake they ass in barsYou know you wouldn't be involvedWith the Underworld dealers, carriers of mac-millersEast coast bodiers, West coast cap-peelersLittle monkey niggas turned gorillas.

~ Jay-Z

Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don’t stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you’ve read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard.

~ Andrew Barrett

I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The reflex of fear was soon replaced with another, more useful emotion.Rage.

~ Tara Moss

There is no mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn -- or worse, indifference -- cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man dies not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.

~ Jed Rubenfeld

I wrote that certain things were leaving me nauseated. I said that judges made me feel that way. Not most of them but all of them. I said that you for example, the judge I'm writing this to, made me feel nauseated. The nausea came from understanding that people produced by every conceivable advantage got to decide whether someone like Jalen lived or died and what was worse was they never fucking seemed to decide that the person should live, that a person's life, any person, was more important than whether some fat fuck at a country club thought you were hard enough on crime or whether you continue to get sufficient reelection campaign contributions you worthless retarded piece of shit. Why should you be allowed to decide anything beyond what you have for lunch you mental infant?

~ Sergio De La Pava

I [Lorna Craig] would say that teaching a girl that her salvation depends on her having sexual relations with a married man is inherently destructive. Such relationships, Craig argues bitterly, should be considered a crime, not a religion.

~ Jon Krakauer

Is it always in the interest of the public safety to seek the prosecutor's traditional solution -- the harshest penalty possible? Or is the public best served by finding ways to change a kid's lot in life for the better, even if that means opening the prison door?

~ Edward Humes