The Benson Murder Case Quotes

“Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing, there is no explanation.”
― S.S. Van Dine, The Benson Murder Case

“Naturally,” Vance replied, “—since it’s an irrelevant factor in most crimes. Every one of us, my dear chap, has just as good a motive for killing at least a score of men as the motives which actuate ninety-nine crimes out of a hundred. And, when anyone is murdered, there are dozens of innocent people who had just as strong a motive for doing it as had the actual murderer. Really, y’ know, the fact that a man has a motive is no evidence whatever that he’s guilty—such motives are too universal a possession of the human race. Suspecting a man of murder because he has a motive is like suspecting a man of running away with another man’s wife because he has two legs.”
― S.S. Van Dine, The Benson Murder Case

“Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization”
― S.S. Van Dine, The Benson Murder Case