Detective Quotes

Dad made it to Gold Shield Detective, so he always busted Robin, my oldest brother, and me. Always got caught, whatever we were doing.

A detective sees death in all the various forms at least five times a week.

I think Morse's thing about being a poor policeman but a good detective is a very good description of him.

The thought of playing a New York detective scared the hell out of me. I didn't know if people would believe me in the role just because of my physicality, which made me want to do it even more.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

I really believe that studying organization, even in the form of studying detective story organization, is very, very valuable for a playwright, a budding playwright.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.

If your neighbors think you're a detective because a cop always brings you home, you might be a redneck.

I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

A really good detective never gets married.

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don't describe anything in the society outside.

I did my very first film with Kirk in Detective Story when he was the greatest, greatest star in the world. I fell in love with him, had a crush on him then.

I play a detective, very close to myself actually.

Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.

If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

I think like a detective.

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

While I was in jail, they handcuffed me and took me to a backroom, where a detective from the FBI and a Secret Service agent were, and they interrogated me for about three or four hours.

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.