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

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

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

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.

The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

No one has it who isnt capable of genuinely liking others at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isnt false.

Wars may be fought by decent men but theyre not won by them.

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.

Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

And, quite frankly, I fully expected to be charged with murder, because they weren't charging anybody. I did it in terms of, I felt like I was throwing down the gauntlet saying look, this is what happened. There's a family out there that needed to know what happened.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

It seems that whatever we do is somehow beyond reproach - murder, rape, drunk driving - as long as we go on a TV show and apologize.

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.

Torture is banned but in two-thirds of the world's countries it is still being committed in secret. Too many governments still allow wrongful imprisonment, murder or "disappearance" to be carried out by their officials with impunity.

Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn't that major.

Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil.

Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.

Certainly, the murder of civilians for political statement did not just begin on September 11, 2001.

The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College.

The facts of a person's life will, like murder, come out.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.

It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!

It's true that Blake was emotionally disturbed - always has been - but he doesn't have murder in his heart. If he was going to do any damage to anything or anyone, it would be to himself.

Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.

Twilight is about getting older and relationships - not about a murder mystery. It's about love when you reach a certain age; nothing is in primary colors.

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide.

Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.

Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

The greatest crime in a Shakespeare play is to murder the king.

America's state religion, is patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that "treason" is morally worse than murder or rape.

The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

Cabin Fever was murder. There was a lot of psychological stress, like not knowing if we were going to finish the movie. The day we arrived to start rehearsals, our main investors pulled out.

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.