When we first opened our store we thought it was necessary to make people aware of our name and who we were, so we advertised every month in a local publication. Since we didn’t have too many events to publicize back then, I’d stick in a quote about murder and mystery in the little ad, and, since I’m an inveterate quote recorder, there was no shortage of material. The ads actually built up a small following, but with more signings and less money spent on advertising, the quotes became quickly expendable.

I read inchoately, I read emotionally. I read for story, I read for milieu. I read because reading crime novels gave me both a tidy sense of resolution and a sense that the ramifications of violent events would go on forever.

– James Ellroy

Truth will come to light, murder cannot be hid long.

– William Shakespeare

What do most major writers have in common? A fascination with crime.

– Joyce Carol Oates

I find homicides quite stimulating.

– Ellery Queen

"That’s why mystery writers are, on the whole, such mild-mannered individuals," Peggy said smiling. "They don’t have to take an axe to the people they hate, they kill them with a pen. Or a word processor."

– Barbara Michaels

Murder was for the newspapers! For the dry, old court records, for history, for anything but not for her!

How could anybody to whom you’d given six ties (and hung over the counter for a long time choosing the designs) be a murderer.

– Mignon G. Eberhart

Steering her Toyota through the crowded local roads, puffing on a cigarette and listening to the radio, she could not have known that just three days before, her son had murdered a young prostitute in the backseat of the car she was now driving.

– Lisa Beth Pulitzer and Joan Swirsky

They really shouldn’t have stopped. After all they had a body in the trunk!

– Fred Rosen

When Patrolman Safina rushed up the back stairs at the station house to report to the Ninth Detective Squad that a dead body had been found in the trunk of a rented car, the immediate reaction was largely annoyance. "Another one?" somebody said.

– Dick Schaap

Again and again, Christa lifted the rock and slammed it into Colleen’s skull until the asphalt split the hard bone into two pieces. "Stop Christa! That’s enough!" Tadaryl called.

"No, I want to see brains."

– Patricia Springer

Each ant emerged from the skull bearing an infinitesimal portion of brain.

– Donald Westlake

"You’ve never really hurt anybody before yesterday, have you?" asked Deputy Thompson.

"Oh, yeah," Cindy replied casually. "I’ve hurt lots of people. I’ve stabbed people, I’ve shot people. I’ve tried to run people down, I’ve beaten people…"

"Ever kill anybody before?"

"No, and I’ve tried so many times."

– Joan Merriam