"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
— Voltaire

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

"Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power."
— Gloria Steinem

"If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong."
— Jasper Fforde (The Big Over Easy)

""How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven.I always chose the icicle:the weapon melts away."
— Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)

"He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead."
— Laurell K. Hamilton (The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #2))

""..rain slowly slides down the glass as if the night is crying.""
— Patricia Cornwell (Trace)

"That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown’s behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful.

Chelaol would call this count of the dead another ‘good start,’ Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives.

Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents.

She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don’t ever be like this,' she urged. 'don’t think that it doesn’t matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance.'"
— Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Queen)

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. "
— Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
— Albert Einstein

"I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die."
— Johnny Cash (The Very Best of Johnny Cash)

"When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help."
— Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs)

"The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up and all the cottage warm;"
— Robert Browning

"Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."
— Alfred Hitchcock

"Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it."
— P.D. James

"Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates."
— Sue Grafton (A is for Alibi)

"You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father."
— Sigmund Freud

"Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying.

Ah, the bright stars of the night.

Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; but no dazzling newcomer. And so little time left, so little time...

Yet still two-faced Medusa laughs from behind the clouds, demanding homage. Homage, Medusa, or a sword, a blade sharper than death itself.

The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death.

No stars tonight, my love.

No Selene."
— Elizabeth Redfern (The Music of the Spheres)

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece."
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

"It's kind of like... It's kind of like playin' a basketball game. I am there and the other player is there, and it's just the two of us and I put the other player's body in my van. And I am the winner."
— Chris Onstad

"Von allen Abenteuern ist Selbstmord das literarischste, mehr noch als Mord."
— J.M. Coetzee (In the Heart of the Country)

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
— H. L. Mencken

"Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water."
— Rex Stout

"There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again."
— Dinesh D'Souza (Letters To A Young Conservative)

"Look now -- in all the history of men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. go out and kill as many of a certain kind of classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"The man behind the check-in counter gives the impression that he has just axe-murdered the motel's owner (and family, and family pet) and is going through these procedures of hostelry so as not to arouse suspicion."
— Paul Quarrington (The Ravine)

"…Obviously, I have always wished I could remember what happened in that wood. The very few people who know about the whole Knocknaree thing invariably suggest, sooner or later, that I should try hypnotic regression, but for some reason I find the idea distasteful. I’m deeply suspicious of anything with a whiff of the New Age about it—not because of the practices themselves, which as far as I can tell from a safe distance may well have a lot to them, but because of the people who get involved who always seem to be the kind who corner you at parties to explain how they discovered that they are survivors and deserve to be happy. I worry that I might come out of hypnosis with that sugar-high glaze of self-satisfied enlightenment, like a seventeen-year-old who’s just discovered Kerouak, and start proselytizing strangers in pubs…"
— Tana French (In the Woods)

"Murder is a dream because lack is the center of both."
— Kathy Acker (My Mother: Demonology: A Novel)

"The Nazis are not justified by saying,

Don't you know that there is more than just the issue of the Jews? The issues are more complex than that! What of the poor in this country, who cannot afford housing? What about the sick and malnourished? Don't you care about these people? Don't you claim to be a follower of Jesus?!

Supporting a murderous political agenda with such an argument is tragic!

And what do we know about Obama? He is the single most anti-life proponent that has ever run for the office of president. "
— Joseph Bayly

"I am not a one-issue voter in the sense that indicates I am an ignorant fundamentalist who only cares about one thing. I believe in protecting the environment. I believe in caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow in her distress. These are some of the so-called "issues" that many of us use to justify voting for Obama. How can we possibly claim it is Christian love for the poor and helpless that motivates us to vote for such a man when he is so committed to the killing of the most helpless among us?

[from "German Christians were scrupulous about social justice..." at http://www.baylyblog.com/2008/11/german-..."
— Joseph Bayly

"It is wrong to kill anyone. It is wrong to kill those who kill. It is wrong to kill the executioner. The laws on murder must be killed!"
— Charles Nodier

"Heute ist der Terrorist an die Stelle des Mörders von einst getreten."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the irresistable charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed with a ‘Good-night, father!’ Hourly they meet the gaze of eyes they would fain close forever, eyes that still open each morning to the light. . . God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought"
— Honoré de Balzac

"In my view, the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times it will require political education and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately, such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hard-liners in the pro-life movement. These hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw all abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing no abortions."
— Dinesh D'Souza (Letters To A Young Conservative)

"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper."
— Michael Cox

"Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim."
— Robert J. Sawyer (Flashforward)

"Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control."
— P.D. James (The Lighthouse)

"As he watches the sun rise, what grieves him is that he failed her. He thinks of the terror she felt. They tell him it was quick, as if that will somehow confine the horror."
— Nancy Horan