For all fans of mystery novels you will love these quotes from some of the greatest mystery fiction authors.
"It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story." - AGATHA CHRISTIE
"I had, I now realized, forgotten the best of them all, that solver and creator of great mysteries, Dr. Freud. Contemporary with Sherlock Holmes, writing up cases like his own Watson, his practice and methods were oddly similar to Holmes’s. They both even did coke. Always the case began with a client arriving in his dusty, cluttered study, full of books and relics, to tell the great man of what was missing or lost. Always he set out by listening, in a wreath of smoke, by noticing the clues, and by diligently, patiently, fearlessly following where they led, which was always into the past, kingdom of lost things, and where, at the end of the story, which is always the discovery of its beginning, there is always a crime." - DAVID GORDON
"I have never felt the slightest inclination to apologize for my tastes; nor to shrink from declaring that mystery or detective novel boldly upholds the principle, in
defiance of contemporary sentiment, that infinite Mystery, beyond that of the finite, may yield to human ratiocination: that truth will “out”: that happiness is possible once Evil is banished: and that God, though, it seems, withdrawn at the presnt time from both Nature and History, is yet a living presence in the world,—an unblinking eye that sees all, absorbs all, comprehends all, each and every baffling clue; and binds all multifariousness together in a divine unity….thus, in emulation of God, the detective aspires to invent that which already exists, in order to see what is there before his (and our) eyes. He is the very emblem of our souls, a sort of mortal savior, not only espying but isolating, and conquering, Evil; in his triumph is our triumph." - JOYCE CAROL OATES
"Rüya knew Galip couldn’t bear her detective novels…He detested this world where the English were parodies of Englishness and no one was fat unless they were colossally so; the murderers were as artificial as their victims, serving as only clues in a puzzle…Galip had once told Rüya that the only detective book he’d ever want to read would be one in which not even the author knew the murderer’s identity. Instead of decorating the story with clues and red herrings, the author would be forced to come to grips with his characters and his subject, and his characters would have a chance to become people in a book instead of just figments of their author’s imagination." - ORHAN PAMUK
"The most curious fact about the detective story is that it makes its greatest appeal precisely to those classes of people who are most immune to other forms of daydream literature. The typical detective story addict is a doctor or clergyman or scientist or artist…. I suspect that the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin…. The phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law. The driving force behind this daydream is the feeling of guilt, the cause of which is unknown to the dreamer. The phantasy of escape is the same, whether one explains the guilt in Christian, Freudian, or any other terms. One’s way of trying to face the reality, on the other hand, will, of course, depend very much on one’s creed." - W.H. AUDEN
"It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check." - ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
"The detective isn't your main character, and neither is your villain. The main character is the corpse. The detective's job is to seek justice for the corpse. It's the corpse's story, first and foremost." - ROSS MACDONALD
