Crime Fiction Quotes

Rage and despair shook her for minutes or hours. She was unaware of the passage of time. Finally spent, she retreated inward and collapsed onto the floor in a fetal position, the letter in shreds around her. The room had grown dark. Like a gentle snowfall, the cold mantle of an unbearable silence descended.

The old joke is that psychiatrists are doctors who can't stand the sight of blood. Maybe they can't stand it, but if they work where I work, they damn well better get used to it.At least surgeons and prizefighters get to wear gloves

I wake and in those first fuddled moments forget you’re not here. I must have been dreaming about you – a tense, erotic dream. I reach out in bed to the place your body should be. It’s cold and there is no hollow. Even the bed is forgetting you.

Al... You ever kill anybody? In the United States? Because I know you mean it and everything, but I know these guys better than I know you. They're soldiers, that's all. No questions, no time to ask, no talk. Cops are worse, and less predictable. When you pull a gun, you've gotta be ready to kill somebody, and I'm telling you it's better to run.

My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear (“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”) signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there’d be real hell to pay.

My inner goddess confirms that staring at a beautiful/rich/powerful face is the basis of True Love.

We pay people and reward them for greed and sleaze . When a sex tape gets made a star is born with a publicity agent on speed dial a six figure pay cheque and a tacky lingerie line....selling filth so you can get your face on Time magazine... From Jukebox

I don't want you to say anything. I want you to listen. You know, being confident isn't the same as being right.

Drug addicts had their drugs. Alcoholics had their bottles. Serial killers had their murders.

Listen, we got two stiffs and a river of red in a villa in Herne Bay...

Angel you may have lucked out this time, but just remember I’m going to be on your ass until I get my revenge. I promise you this will not be the last time you will see me! You’re a dead man Medina, maybe not now but soon! - Orlando to Angel under the crumbling furnace in the hotel.

A pawn only needs to move five spaces to become the queen" - from Bhendi Bazaar

As I left his office he continued his telephone conversation, and as Amanda had declared, she was in fact waiting for me. t“So, Amanda, what is it now? Who is it you want to fix me up with today?”t“Well actually, I don’t have any new candidates in my mind just yet. I actually need some decorating advice.  I want to tackle my living room den. It has been about three years since it has had a lift. It needs a new theme, and I would like your opinion of what direction I should consider . . . modern contemporary or vintage?”t“Well, what does your husband think, or does he have a vote?”t“Well, on paper, yes, but between us women . . . absolutely not.

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.("Introduction")

No sun cream or condoms, just in case you’re looking at the lady-boys. There’s plenty of AIDS lingering about and every STD you can imagine.

I've always said women are vicious creatures - Detective Zach Grimes

She knew with chilling and absolute certainty she was next.

How dare she not give in to his "vulnerability." There was only so much rejection he could take.