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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
8b16bef Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have. courtroom-drama crime John Grisham
571f7d7 The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. detective mystery crime novel Arthur Conan Doyle; Corrections And Editor Edgar W. Smith; Illustrators
bba4dd5 Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. death punishment justice crime George Bernard Shaw
76ce296 The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. criticism critic detectives mystery crime creativity G.K. Chesterton
f544189 Behind every successful fortune there is a crime. every successful crime fortune Mario Puzo
ba9ff74 If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter. humor inspirational business crime mafia John Gottman (
2787839 I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid I'll never get a chance to live! diamond-eyes humour fantasy inspirational thriller science-fiction crime A.A. Bell
a041cd9 "Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. myth responsibility morality reason fear love truth atheist-argument christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory divine-dictatorship eternal-punishment great-atheist-argument hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens immoral-christianity love-your-neighbor supreme-being dawkins indifference human-sacrifice eternal-father totalitarianism debate dictatorship richard-dawkins wishful-thinking belief evidence ethics atheism health intellect atheist redemption crime guilt Christopher Hitchens
aa4d12d It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place. murder theory humanity quote living life american-psycho psycho conclusion psychopath murderers gore serial-killer epiphany serial-killers the-world demons murderer society human-beings crime humans cruel human-nature horror evil Bret Easton Ellis
03facab To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws. laws crime Ursula K. Le Guin
b6c8df1 I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. marlowe noir crime Raymond Chandler
3857a0d The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization. wealth history french-imperialism reparations civilisation imperialism united-states apologies haiti crime france guilt Noam Chomsky
cbff295 It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to 'serve the community' by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways. crime Terry Pratchett
4632ff3 Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly? seeing love crime Jodi Picoult
f0f0ca5 Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each? good-and-evil fate time free-will choice change chain-of-events long-term circumstance intention cause-and-effect results opposites result chance crime H. Rider Haggard
5973969 The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple. illness love gallows judges the-last-day-of-a-condemned-man prisons cross hospitals crime victor-hugo Victor Hugo
a095d03 It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed? economy income quality-of-life wages housing economics crime Michael Francis Moore
11385c8 The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not. economics crime John Kenneth Galbraith
7f870e5 Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way. money injustice corruption justice prison crime Raymond Chandler
aacb1de It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor's wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook. scrapbook crime Margaret Atwood
9e0627d Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional -- to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death. investigations mysteries detective-stories detectives crime Kate Summerscale
331d32d I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite. literary crime Richard Ford
8ec6c04 It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten. revenge murder fear graveyards infanticide crime Christopher Hitchens
3d167c3 Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. in Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again. How could Leigh-Cheri draw for Gulietta the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem. injustice mongooses hawaii rodents justice crime Tom Robbins
c8ea8b7 You ever get the feeling all hell's about to break loose and there's nothing you can do about it? romance suspense-drama crime Ali Vali
dd4df5b We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes. good-and-evil mankind humanity give-and-take triumph price cost society survival crime sin H. Rider Haggard
0d9926f In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in -- or more precisely not in -- the country's businesses and banks. This inventory -- it should perhaps be called the bezzle -- amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks. ... Just as the boom accelerated the rate of growth, so the crash enormously advanced the rate of discovery. Within a few days, something close to a universal trust turned into something akin to universal suspicion. Audits were ordered. Strained or preoccupied behavior was noticed. Most important, the collapse in stock values made irredeemable the position of the employee who had embezzled to play the market. He now confessed. finance embezzlement crime John Kenneth Galbraith
1e354a9 He saw trust. Complete trust. It was a gift, a precious one, and it humbled him. I've got you, Emeline. I will always be with you. Dragomire to Emeline, Dark Legacy, Dark #27 romance fantasy dark-27 dark-legacy mystery crime paranormal vampires Christine Feehan
3461d70 "Don't make a career out of underestimating me." -- Claire de Haven" l-a-confidential red-scare the-big-nowhere underestimate femme-fatale fearless noir jazz crime James Ellroy
029385b Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity. candide henry-kissinger turkish-invasion-of-cyprus turkey naivete war-crimes cyprus voltaire crime self-esteem Christopher Hitchens
961b4fa You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich. poverty wealth politics life stealing rights crime Mohsin Hamid
f827043 But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people. hatred rape racism fear degrade plantations southern satan crime oppression James Lee Burke
96b8457 It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin. marriage literary crime Richard Ford
d102013 Maybe this is what it feels like for civilians when they see cops doing some of the dirty work. A lot of times they don't understand what's happening. They see something they don't like and it upsets them--because they don't have the full story, aren't personally facing the problem, and don't know how much worse the alternative could be. detectives mystery crime police Jim Butcher
96fd4c2 Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it's bad. good life truth misunderstood spooky depth book literary ethics characters crime lonely sad novel evil Rebecca McNutt
c2a8601 "I can't believe I have you here with me," she whispered and turned her face into his throat, nuzzling him. Inhaling. Tasting his skin with her tongue. "My life was pain and terror. You took away his voice. You gave me hope that my daughter would survive and others wouldn't shun her. I was terrified and alone, and you changed all that. You brought beauty and hope back into my life. Thank you for that, Dragomire. I swear I will spend every minute making you happy." Emeline to Dragomire, Dark Legacy, Dark #27" romance fantasy dark-27 dark-legacy mystery crime paranormal vampires Christine Feehan
2df8242 Siradan insan uygarligin lanetidir. fiction psycology crime John Fowles
03fc635 "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")" gunplay mobsters noir gun chase crime mob Cornell Woolrich
be4c1dc "When a child disappears, the space she'd occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people--relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print--create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task. "But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It's a silence that's two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed. "It's a silence that's different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it's a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you. "The silence of the dead says, Goodbye. "The silence of the missing says, Find me." -- kidnap child-abuse noir crime Dennis Lehane
99fc146 "Who was the moron on the phone?" "Carl Avery," Kate said. "A long-standing client and potential felon." humor crime Jennifer Crusie
23d8df0 Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please, treat your garlic with respect. delicious garlic food-writing kitchen crime food Anthony Bourdain
55ac53d "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")" jealousy murder concussion cuckold homicide crime Cornell Woolrich
18bae26 He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit. dashiel-hammett detective detective-fiction detective-noir detective-novel detective-novels detective-stories ernest-hemingway f-scott-fitzgerald sartre francois-truffaut hart-crane jean-paul-sartre mystery-and-crime-drama mystery-suspense mystery-thriller raymond-chandler truffaut crime-thriller crime-fiction noir noir-fiction detectives mystery crime Barry N. Malzberg
4eb1804 "There is a limit to human charity," said Lady Outram, trembling all over. "There is," said Father Brown dryly, "and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness today; or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven." forgiveness crime G.K. Chesterton
9563645 The bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear--we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender...In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be. rape rage recovery-from-abuse healing-from-abuse outrage child-rape healing-insights healing shame crime recovery child-sexual-abuse incest Maureen Brady
e45f2ed Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-walkers, Whores, Linnen-lifters, who are like so many Jakes, Privies, Houses of Office, Ordures, Excrements, Easments and piles of Sir-reverence: the whores of Ratcliffe High-way smell of Tarpaulin and stinking Cod from their continuall Traffick with seamen's Breeches. There are other such wretched Objects about these ruined Lanes, all of them lamentable Instances of Vengeance. And it is not strange (as some think) how they will haunt the same Districts and will not leave off their Crimes until they are apprehended, for these Streets are their Theatre. Theft, Whoredom and Homicide peep out of the very Windows of their Souls; Lying, Perjury, Fraud, Impudence and Misery are stamped upon their very Countenances as now they walk within the Shaddowe of my Church. london-city crime vice london Peter Ackroyd
c401a8f "The American craving for illegal, mind-altering, addictive chemicals provides a steady flow of American capital through the Texas border into Mexico and South America. Basically, the drug traffic is uncontainable as long as its U.S. market exists, but newspapers and other media virtuously trumpet feel-good headlines about "record drug busts" and arrests while the drug trade continues unabated." politics-of-the-united-states crime drugs William Earl Maxwell
7103481 "If you were me you'd do the right thing, help your friends, because you're not a coward," Mandy sighed sadly. "I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing... well, now's my chance to do the right thing, to save someone's life, because I don't want you to die." "Save someone's life? I'm no one," Alecto laughed morbidly. "A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You'd be wasting your time and risking your own life...." "This is my life," Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world." -- suicide grief murder loss wrong death friendship disturbance moral-values seaside imaginary-friend cape-breton nova-scotia coward jail rescue help friend misery crime scary right morals ocean dying Rebecca McNutt
3ebec55 It's like this with us baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts....nothing we do is right, not ever. If we get a confession we beat it out of a guy, they say, and some shyster lawyer calls us Gestapo. society-thinking cynicism crime police Raymond Chandler
262a618 "Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like," Porfiry Petrovitch began again, "but I can't resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it." humour crime Fyodor Dostoyevsky
334ba0c "That hurts my pride, Watson. It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now..." -Sherlock Holmes- -The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Five Orange Pips-" crime Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1aac290 If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. lies truth perception crime Don DeLillo
7fa5985 C'etait un jour de fete. Mais l'haine se repete. Laissez pas la peur dominer le coeur, Si on veut que l'amour soit vainqueur amour-indépendance-liberté ataque bastille-pompeii chute coeur despoir fete gloire guerres haine horreur lamour notre-cœur nouvelles peuple rime terrorisme vanite ville independance peur assassin coexistence amour poesie bastille terrorists vain contemplation joie-de-vivre journalism mort revolution conscience crime vengeance trouble terrible france terror victor-hugo Ana Claudia Antunes
681fd9a Hasan Pasha also gave the green light for Turks and Greeks to take whatever action they pleased against any Albanians they found: killing them was not a crime. Continuing his march, he executed all the Albanians he encountered, setting fire to a monastery where other were hiding and offering five sequins for every Albanian head brought him. ottomans crime Mark Mazower
989bd3b Leave now and live, or stay here and die. Your choice. philip-margolin robin-lockwood the-perfect-alibi law mystery crime Phillip Margolin
b30f0bc "...So, um, you're from Rochester? Like, New York?" Jersey asked. "Yup, we used to live out there," Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. "You ever been?" "Naw, the closest I've ever been to there would be... well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime... I loved it." travel love angst urban pollution new-jersey teenagers crime crowd city Rebecca McNutt
b760fd5 She said: Sheriff how come you to let crime get so out of hand in your county? Sounded like a fair question I reckon. Maybe it was a fair question. Anyway I told her, I said: It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight. crime-prevention manners crime Cormac McCarthy
a3efe44 "Know this, sivamet-this child will be mine. I will take Vadim's blood from you and exchange it for mine. Eventually, over time, she will be ours. My child and yours. My blood will change her cells. her organs, reshaping and repairing any damage. 'The healer-" - Dragomir to Emeline" romance fantasy christine-feehan dark-27 dark-legacy mystery crime paranormal vampires Christine Feehan
68bc3e6 "The hallmarks of the noir style are fear, guilt and loneliness, breakdown and despair, sexual obsession and social corruption, a sense that the world is controlled by, malignant forces preying on us, a rejection of happy endings and a preference for resolutions heavy with doom, but always redeemed by a breathtakingly vivid poetry of word (if the work was a novel or story) or image (if it was a movie). ("Introduction")" noir noir-fiction crime Francis M. Nevins
eace725 "In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure. In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts. ("Introduction")" fiction cornell-woolrich the-great-depression pulp noir crime police Francis M. Nevins
62662af Painters, writers, musicians are lonely people. So are statesmen and admirals and generals. But then, I added to be fair, so are criminals and lunatics. Let's just say, not to be too flattering, that true individuals are lonely. -- Vivienne Michel romance bond thriller spy crime Ian Fleming
871f033 I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse. romance hardboiled detective-novel crime-fiction noir crime Ed Lynskey
c80a4a3 There are so many shady things happening in this country, they're happening all around us all the time, and we just accept them. philosophy truth country united-states corruption mystery crime evil Rebecca McNutt
ea49db0 I went to the door and looked out. The cool night breeze was blowing peacefully down the hall. No excited neighbors hung out of doorways. A small gun had gone off and broken a pane of glass, but noises like that don't mean much any more. los-angeles guns crime Raymond Chandler
332a678 "She is shocked by the rows of thick Plexiglas windows, each equipped with a telephone, each with a prisoner on one side and an outsider on the other. There is a teenage girl chatting with a prisoner who is presumably her father. There's a married couple talking to their daughter. There's a woman with a baby in her arms, sobbing into her phone as she begs her husband not to plead guilty for his crimes. Jail is terrifying to Geraldine, not only because it's a house of criminals but also because it's a cold slap in the face, a reminder of where she will eventually end up. "You've got to stay with me the whole time, Callo! I'm serious, you CANNOT leave me here." "I'll never," Callo vows, but he's eyeing her strangely. "Just remember which side of the glass you're on right now, Geraldine." plexiglas slammer prisoner telephone jail glass daughter husband prison crime strange guilty phone Rebecca McNutt
97ba715 Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard's objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It's lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he's done, he's still one of the closest friends she has. murder friendship guard jail glass hand friend prison crime Rebecca McNutt
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