Detective Fiction Authors

"Discovering that a fraud exists is only the first step. It has to be proved and the proof has to be absolutely watertight."

"Architectural drawings may look beautiful and be admired by critics but to be good, they have to work in daily use."

"Even the impetuous Helena Justina was an advocate of traditional family councils. However, every Roman matron knows that domestic councils were devised by our foremothers purely so the views of the matron of a household may prevail."

"Luck is a wonderful luxury. What could better prove that some are born under a star of good fortune than the career (and the large, comfortable home) of the Great King?"

"‘What's the verdict?’ ‘A shining new talent. A breathtaking story, written with mystical intensity. An author who will sell and sell.’"

"That's the trouble with foreign travel. You spend half your time trying to find edible food, and the rest fighting off men who profess extravagant love to your female companions. I'm amazed how many women believe outright lies from foreigners."

"Intimidation and awe are how our rulers keep us respectful."

"Not all the fine civic building programmes in the world would ever displace the raw forces that drive most of humankind. This was the true city: greed, corruption and violence."

"Smartness always helps in gaining access to the houses of the wealthy. Anyone with a clean face is acceptable to thugs."

"'Do you kill people?' 'Not regularly. It's too much trouble making my peace with the gods afterwards.'"

"Never lend if you need repayment; never give where you want a return."

"Never stop to breathe the pretty flower scents. The graves of the poor still stink."

"If being hit on the head by a falling flower tub could be worth cash to the victim, what price a child’s life under civil law?"

"I despise women who rely on men entirely for their own existence."

"Communicating wit is a lonely art. It demands an independent soul."

"You're not bloody Aristophanes, and the people who are paying for tickets are not educated Athenians. We're acting for turnips who only come to talk to their cousins and fart. We have to give them a lot of action and low-level jokes, but you can leave all that to us on stage. We know what's required. Your job is to hone the basic framework and remember the simple motto: short speeches, short lines, short words."

"I asked why Grumio had had to turn to lesser things.'No call. In my father or grandfather's day all I would have needed in life were my cloak and shoes, my flask and strigil, a cup and knife to take to dinner, and a small wallet for my earnings. Everyone who could find the wherewithal would eagerly ask a wandering jokesmith in.' 'Sounds just like being a vagrant philosopher!' 'A cynic,' he agreed readily. 'Exactly. Most cynics are witty and all clowns are cynical. Meet us on the road, and who could tell the difference?’ 'Me, I hope! I'm a good Roman. I'd take a five-mile detour to avoid a philosopher.'"

"But mere technical details can be worked out any time. All a hero needs is grit."

"Stick with it, Xanthus. There are fortunes to be made out of bristle for a man with deft hands."

"The world is full of people slandering their birthplaces, as if they really believe that small-town life is different elsewhere."

"The new "humour", if you can call it that, is pure malicious gossip. Instead of making a genuine point, it's now good enough to repeat any ribald story without a thought for whether it's even true."

"He listened with the mild demeanour of a man who had waited eight years for his town council to draw up a specification for emergency repairs."

"The plumber plodded along in silence, like a man who has learned to be polite to lunatics through dealing with civil engineers."

"She called me a rat.” “Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close!"

"I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!"

"You could tell those two had been married by the way that she ignored him."

"We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve."

"Petronius would take his free bread buns and run. I happened to know that since Petro had been elected to the watch he had never cast a vote. He believed a man on a public salary should be impartial. I didn’t agree but I admired him being so stubborn in his eccentricities. Aufidius Crispus would be an unusual politician if he had allowed for such morality in the voters he was courting."

"In fact, making up a spiteful lie has become respectable. Today's "jesters" are outright public nuisances."

"It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case."

"In my experience, men who sit in corners are the ones to watch."

"'How old now?' 'Thirty. Downhill to the dark boat across the Styx. Probably be sick over the side in Charon's ferry too…'"

"Some men are born lucky. Others are born Marcus Didius Falco."

"I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps. If they start out with nothing I tend to get depressed because either they have just stripped off for someone else or, in my line of work, they are usually dead."

"Popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command."

"Emperors must make their own rules."

"I had been right in the first place. Getting involved with politicians is complete stupidity."

"Senator, don't let your judgement be warped by one heady moment."

"In an ideal world I ought to have gone with him to observe their reactions, but in an ideal world heroes never get tired or depressed; what's more, heroes are paid more than me."

"Love and death are gritty subjects. Their appropriate handling by poets does not require myrtle petals and violets."

"Marcus! I thought you must have been developing other interests, but I never expected to find you with your arms locked round a fish..."

"Justice never paid a poor man's bills."

"He wore the purple; it was his entitlement. With it he had neither wreath nor jewels. For him the best adornment of rank was acute native intelligence."

"Many Americans share the feeling that our society has forgotten how to mind its own business."

"What we do want is equal protection of the laws and all that implies, and we want our fellow citizens to acknowledge that our constitutionally protected choices about what is, after all, our own business should not disqualify us from equal membership in the multitude of American communities. We ask and deserve that our fellow citizens recognize our existence and accept us into the common life. This is neither begging for acceptance nor looking for approval. It is the corollary of the Bill of Rights that creates a nation of equals, equally free. The constitutional protections we are entitled to must go along with the effort to educate nongay Americans out of their hostile conditioning. Again, this is not to win approval, but to change perceptions enough to prevent majority prejudices from being acted out against us. In the end, acceptance does matter - acceptance not of the way other people live their lives, but of their right to live them. Stated generally, what gays and lesbians want is not very different from what most Americans want: to live as little disturbed by government as possible but secure in the knowledge that social institutions will serve them equally and that laws affecting them will be enforced fairly. We are demanding our basic rights, rights that Americans are not supposed to be deprived of without due process of law and that are nevertheless denied us, without due process, as a matter of routine. It would be nice if our families, friends, neighbours, leaders, and other fellow citizens could just get over their prejudices about us. It is really difficult sometimes to see what in the lives we lead should be a source of such interest to so many people. At the very least, public institutions should treat gay and lesbian Americans and their lives with the same respect they give heterosexual Americans. People's inclinations, orientation, preference, nature, and private lives should be respected, unless it can be shown that some harm to the public interest would result. This is the principle of equal protection under the law."

"What gays and lesbians have to teach other Americans is that morality is how you live and how you conduct yourself, not what you happen to be."

"It is a sorry fact that prejudice against gays, and the violence it engenders with increasing frequency, are not yet treated by the media with the same clarity that racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, or discrimination against the disabled are."

"For many years, the single most potent weapon in the armoury of invisibility was the shame with which gay men and women were taught to regard their sexual nature. What kindles the fury of the antigay right at the gay and lesbian claim to equality and freedom is the implicit rejection of that shame. The energy released by that triumph over shame is what makes the movement so powerful. The gay and lesbian movement signals the existence of a people who have decided that they know more about themselves than what has been shoved down their throats by an ignorant and fearful society."

"The campaign against gays is really a campaign against modern American society and against the freer women and men who populate and struggle in it. Gay rights attempts to structure that freedom with fairness so that we can get on with the business of building real and stable lives for all the different kinds of people and families inhabiting this country. Fairness is what this is about - not the sanctity of marriage or the "promotion" of homosexuality, but fairness."

"The fact is that most gay men and women lead, or try to lead, ordinary lives indistinguishable from those of their neighbours."