"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith."
— R.A. Salvatore (Streams of Silver)

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

"I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story."
— Charles Baxter (Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction)

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
— Oscar Wilde

""Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.""
— Democritus

"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic."
— G.K. Chesterton (The Blue Cross)

"I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defense I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915."
— Laurie R. King

"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

"Nice day for a funeral."
— Anthony Horowitz (The Falcon's Malteser)

"When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude."
— Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

"We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge."
— John D. MacDonald (Darker Than Amber)

"As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify."
— Arthur Conan Doyle (Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes)

"You should read the City of Ember people! It ROCKS!"
— Jeane Duprau

"The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive."
— Arthur Conan Doyle

"Always just a brainstorm away from our next disaster..."
— Birgit Pratcher (June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies)

"Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence."
— Robertson Davies

"I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows."
— Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

"It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed
"
— Thomas Moore

"I just completed The Tenth Circle. It is an excellent mystery story surrounding a family with modern day issues."
— Jodi Picoult

"as jolaha ka maram na jana, jinh jag ani pasarinhh tana;
dharti akas dou gad khandaya, chand surya dou nari banaya;
sahastra tar le purani puri, ajahu bine kathin hai duri;
kahai kabir karm se jori, sut kusut bine bhal kori;


No one could understand the secret of this weaver who, coming into existence, spread the warp as the world; He fixed the earth and the sky as the pillars, and he used the sun and the moon as two shuttles; He took thousands of stars and perfected the cloth; but even today he weaves, and the end is difficult to fathom.

Kabir says that the weaver, getting good or bad yarn and connecting karmas with it, weaves beautifully. "
— Kabir (The Bijak of Kabir)

"I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed."
— Umberto Eco

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
— James Crumley (The Last Good Kiss)

"Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world?"
— Agatha Christie (Death on the Nile: A Hercule Poirot Mystery)

"He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it."
— Arnaldur Indriðason (Silence of the Grave: A Thriller)

"..it sounded very good and very false at the same time, so that you had the feeling that even if was true, he was touching only on the very highest points and maybe embellishing those a little."
— Bill Pronzini (The Vanished)

"We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real."
— Ruth Rendell (One Across, Two Down)

"Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one."
— P.D. James (Original Sin)

"The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I'd never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should've learned better. "
— Ed Lynskey (Pelham Fell Here)

"'Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'

She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the darkness lift at the touch of her fingertips against his lips. But it shivers, and light bleeds in among the cracks."
— Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union)

"But maybe she should turn the other way while I get dressed. Wouldn't want to ruin her for other men. - Dean"
— Jeff Mariotte (Supernatural: Witch's Canyon)

"'I don't know anything!' Tim(Caleb) wailed.
He'd never spoken a truer word in his life."
— Anthony Horowitz (Three of Diamonds)

"'It was a slaughterhouse, the most horrific scene I have ever witnessed...'"
— Minette Walters

"In fact-Dr. Sheppard!"
— Agatha Christie (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

"Doomed to Hell. Every last one of you."
— June Ahern (The Skye in June)