top of page
.png){kind=small}
Crime Quotes
"Duntz asked Smith, 'Added up, how much money did you get from the Cutters?' 'Between forty and fifty dollars."
23
"Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H." It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets."
22
"The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over."
22
"I suppose we'll never know what really happened in that room, though he did tell police, 'I did it because I'm a dirty dog.' This is not a very convincing alibi. He may as well have said, 'I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one."
22
"As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify."
21
"The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous."
21
"The criminal is the creative artist, the detective only the critic."
21
"Base stealing, like crime in general, is increasing and is also getting more difficult to curb."
21
"There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn't bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man."
21
"All day we've witnessed each other's crimes. You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die?"
20
"Rockweiler (nickname) has settled down over the years, he is a man mountain, he stands some six-and-a-half foot tall, and is round about eighteen or nineteen stones in weight. He too works in Barlinnie, this dog was responsible for giving the Wendy House seg unit the tough name tag, as he dished out the beatings to some very hard prisoners in the past. I can't take that away from him, but he was a bit of a shit bag as well because he wore the full riot body armour when he offered to fight."
20
"Ever see moors murderer Ian Brady, study his photos, study Black, study Cannon, study Sutcliffe - study them all! Who says evil is not recognisable?"
20
"So rich a client having suffered such a messy death was an unsettling embarrassment to Captain Harald Biscay. It was bad for business. He had the murder hushed up immediately, his security staff investigating the matter covertly but thoroughly. Five and a half thousand souls onboard. Five and a half thousand suspects. Three days. So far, nothing. Now it would be taken further by the planetary authorities on the colony world below. A forensic team (cunningly disguised as a cleaning crew) was now rummaging through Smiffs apartment, examining every single particle. He had a feeling -- a strong feeling, about what they were going to find. Somehow, Biscay was of the opinion that this was going to be another contender for the Unsolved Murders show."
19
"These three man," Mimi said, "are suspects in a recent theft. Last night, Polly Partial received a shipment of twenty blueberry pies. This morning she counted them and came up short.""How many are missing?" I asked."Last night she had twenty," Harvey said, shutting the station door, "and today she found zero. So at least eighteen are missing.""At least." I agreed."
19
"Everybody talks about foul dens and filthy slums in which crime can run riot; but it's just the other way. They are called foul, not because crimes are committed, but because crimes are discovered. It's in the neat, spotless, clean and tidy places that crime can run riot; no mud to make footprints; no dregs to contain poison; kind servants washing out all traces of the murder; and the murderer killing and cremating six wives and all for want of a little Christian dirt."
19
"In crime books it's possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it's new. Nowadays it's part of our world and we can simply assume that knowledge if we write about it."
19
"The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?"
19
"Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime."
18
"He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing to kill children for the right price."
18
"They ask themselves: "What will he do? "How will he react? "Will he go mad? "Will he bite? "Will he be armed? They're pumped up with fear. Adrenaline pumping, fingers tense on the trigger, brains racing. And I'm cool as a cat! The name 'Charles Bronson' causes panic! The name 'Mickey Peterson' causes stress! The police all love to arrest me, as I'm the most exciting madman they will ever arrest! It's a fact. So here I am years later, and I'm still the madman. There is no escaping my past."
18
"Murderer!" he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence. The man did not look at him."What do you mean... what is... Who is a murderer?" muttered Raskolnikov hardly audibly."You are a murderer," the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Raskolnikov's pale face and stricken eyes."
18
"Crime writers, I've noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven't been caught yet!"
18
"Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them..."
18
"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons."
17
"If you want to routinely break the law and get away with it, then a police officer would be a great career choice for you."
17
"No matter what the good boys tell you, criminality is not a level playing field."
17
"There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person [she] was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that spring the necessity of our questions."
17
"A criminal always returns home."
17
"Don't go, said Cedric. "Murder has made you practically one of the family."
16
"On general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes."
16
"I've often been asked; how do you rob a bank? The answer to that is that there is no instruction book. The fact is you never know what will happen when you step through the door of a bank and declare yourself. Certainly, you can work hard on preparations; have everything organised from vehicles to weapons and set out the getaway, but there are no set rules."
16
"The riot screws did not stop there, they dragged him down the corridor where ten other nameless screws repeatedly coshed him over the head and face and body. Dingus by now was totally out cold, he had received the equivalent injuries of someone who was involved in a car crash."
16
"It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so."
15
bottom of page