"The setting for the crime stories by what we might call the Mayhem Parva school would be a cross between a village and a commuters’ dormitory in the South of England, self-contained and largely self-sufficient. It would have a well-attended church, an inn with reasonable accommodation for itinerant detective-inspectors, a village institute, library and shops—including a chemist’s where weed killer and hair dye might conveniently be bought."

"As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. ... He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics."

"Detective stories—the modern fairy tales."

"It seemed to me quite poignant that this genre should have flourished as a kind of therapeutic reaction to the horrors of the Great War."

"I had an interest in death from an early age. It fascinated me. When I heard ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,’ I thought, ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’"

"Why bother yourself about the cataract of drivel for which Conan Doyle is responsible? I am sure he never imagined that such a heap of rubbish would fall on my devoted head in consequence of his stories."

"Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley."

"It seems to have been taken for granted, quite wrongly, that because murder novels are easy reading they are also light reading. They are no easier reading than Hamlet, Lear or Macbeth. They border on tragic and never quite become tragic. Their form imposes a certain clarity of outline which is only found in the most accomplished ‘straight’ novels."

"A genre which has traditionally been bedevilled by rules, regulations, and rituals reminiscent of a third-rate Masonic cult."

"When I’m asked why I write crime fiction, I always answer that I enjoy playing games."

"The mystery whose power as a storytelling form persisted despite its long-term residence in the low-rent precincts of critical esteem."

"Murder itself is not interesting. It is the impetus to murder, the passions and terrors which bring it to pass and the varieties of feelings surrounding the act that make a sordid or revolting event compulsive fascination. Even the most ardent readers of detective fiction are not much preoccupied with whether a Colt Magnum revolver or a Bowie knife was used to dispatch the victim. The perpetrator’s purpose, the ‘why’, is what impels them to read on."

"Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature."

"Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement that any other single subject."

"Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a lovestory or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."

"A Private Eye was Superman wearing a fedora."

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."

"I generally thought of a character or two, and then of a set of incidents, and the question was how my people would behave. They had the knack of just squeezing out of unpleasant places and of bringing their doings to a rousing climax."

"In the melodrama of the brutal thriller we come as close as it is normally possible for art to come to the pure self-righteousness of the lynching mobs."

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

"With Agatha Christie ingenuity of plot was paramount—no one looked for subtlety of characterization, motivation, good writing. It was rather like a literary card trick. Today we’ve moved closer to the mainstream novel, but nevertheless we need plot."

"I got a suffocating grey impression of armaments catalogues and code nerds and excessively factual dialogue disclosing how every double-cross has another behind it and all roads lead to a vast distrust."

"Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve."

"Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat. This tradition began in America with writers like Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, who wrote about grifters, losers, petty crooks and bums. These were struggling working stiffs barely making it, and only a wrong decision away from falling between the cracks or pushing someone else into one."

"For me, Private Eye stories were the easiest of the lot. All you had to do was talk out of the side of your mouth and get in trouble with the cops."

"All over England, it seemed to me, bodies were being discovered by housemaids in libraries. Village poison pens were tirelessly at work. There was murder in Mayfair, on trains, in airships, in Palm Court lounges, between the acts. Golfers stumbled over corpses on fairways. Chief Constables awoke to them in their gardens. We had nothing like it in West Cork."

"It is, it ought to be, it must be a morality."

"Debts are more deadly than a Persian sword, especially for a captain of excubitors."

"“Gaius says there is no cure for the plague. If that’s so, we can only try to scare it away.”"

"Time is short whenever official business is concerned. Even the candles burn faster."

"It happened that a shipment of marble intended for a job on which I was working for the business owner I mentioned was rejected as unfit for the purpose. Not the shade specified, or some such defect. Seizing my chance, I bought the marble and so began the rise to my present position. However, I was only able to purchase it because I had money earned by hauling those buckets of concrete about the city for years. There’s a lesson in that for us all, as I have often pointed out my son."

"There’s bronze coins to be had from boiling pitch, but there’s gold in terror."

"“You’re embarrassed for your emperor. Understandably.” Justin grimaced. “I don’t need a physician, Felix. What I need is a plumber.”"

"“It’s all too subtle for a simple man like me,” Felix continued. “Intrigues and plots and poisons and loyalties shifting every time the wind changes. Just think, John, in their own way, half the city wear masks of one sort or another. For most, including lowly folk like us, there are enemies everywhere.”"

"Alas, the muse’s whisperings fall upon deaf military ears."

"You’ll be disappointed when you see how bare that bone is. Well, life is full of disappointments."

"Sometimes knowing your past is to know your future."

"The gold is worth nothing, the craftsman is the treasure."

"A man makes his own fortunes."

"It takes back-breaking labor to build a church, but at the end it is filled with song."

"Surely a man passing by a lamp will cast a shadow?"

"There’s nothing courtiers enjoy more than seeing blood spilled. Until a drop of it gets on their clothing."

"The more plausible the rogue, the tighter you need to hold on to the silver."

"Since our enemies don’t have chains, our best defense is to learn which way they are going to jump."

"[I]s it enough for a man to control his actions, or are you pleased only with those who can control their thoughts as well?"

"Reasonable men make the mistake of thinking everyone else is reasonable."

"“Will the mob follow one who is dead?” John countered. “More readily than one who is alive.”"

"“There’s no justice, John! There is no reason at all for me to be kept here!” “Justice is the first casualty of war and that’s the point we’re rapidly approaching.""

"Every day some of those who lived in [the] city fell prey to its predators. Anonymous murderers were about as likely to be brought to justice as a deadly plague or fire."

"He wondered how long Anatolius’ stoicism would endure. Soldiers who had silently borne the most grievous battlefield wounds could be reduced to whimpering madness by extended periods of enforced hopelessness."