Kim Newman Quotes & Sayings

No crime too small' was never exactly Moriarty's slogan, but the criminal genius would apply himself to minor offences if an unusual challenge was presented. — Kim Newman

In a battle which might interest scholars of modern urban warfare, the Conduit Street Comanche whipped the tar out of an irregular band of crybaby destitutes who pledged allegiance to the Watson's departed mucker-wallah. — Kim Newman

Places, she told herself, were not evil: they were what people made of them. — Kim Newman

Good things come to an end, bad things have to be stopped. — Kim Newman

Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. — Kim Newman

It was as if there were but one woman in the world, laughing at him from behind a dozen masks. — Kim Newman

Power is based, at bottom, on the ability to kill; thus the means of killing have to be available, even if only to a select few. — Kim Newman

Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents - might have been a child - never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn't help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker's boy rolling in the flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns. — Kim Newman

Dullards would have you believe that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth ... but to a mathematical mind, the impossible is simply a theorem yet to be solved. We must not eliminate the impossible, we must conquer it, suborn it to our purpose. — Kim Newman

There will never be slaves in Britain,' Godalming continued, 'but those who stay warm will naturally serve us, as the excellent Bessie has just served me. Have a care, lest you wind up the equivalent of some damned regimental water-bearer.'
In India, I knew a water-bearer who was a better man than most. — Kim Newman

Moriarty rarely smiled,and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by a deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death rattle. — Kim Newman

Mad' sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in 'em that you put there. 'Mad' is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner of lunacy as you're turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest 'scrape' was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon. — Kim Newman

Defend Miss Haller from the Nazis. In the final chapter, the ghosts saw off the spies and word came through that Miss Haller's father had been smuggled out of Germany. Gillian — Kim Newman

Dracula can sustain many interpretations and exists in many phantasmal forms ... and Johnny Alucard is my attempt to explore the multiplicity of Draculas unloosed on the world in the long wake of Stoker's novel. — Kim Newman

How did your parents come to be "lost at sea", Moriarty?'
The professor paused, and said, 'Mysteriously, Moran. — Kim Newman

Only an idiot guesses or reasons or deduces,' the Professor said, patiently. — Kim Newman

Moriarty smiled his adder's smile.
And I relaxed. I knew. My destiny and his wound together. It was a sensation I'd never got before upon meeting a man. When I'd had it from women, the upshot ranged from disappointment to attempted murder. Understand me, Professor James Moriarty was a hateful man, the most hateful, hateable, creature I have ever known, not excluding Sir Augustus and Kali's Kitten and the Abominable Bloody Snow-Bastard and the Reverend Henry James Prince. He was something man-shaped that had crawled out from under a rock and moved into the manor house. But, at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture. — Kim Newman

This is the moral, Oh My Best Beloved: never kill anyone for a 'Cause'.
For why not, Uncle Basher?
Because causes don't pay, Little Friend of all the World. Adherents expect you to kill just for the righteousness of it. They don't want to pay you! They don't understand why you want paying! — Kim Newman

Impaler,' she declared, 'I have no equal. — Kim Newman

Love is always a species of insanity. If — Kim Newman

He stroked Tibbles, who was starting to leak and make nasty little noises. — Kim Newman

I've often described my book 'Anno Dracula' as 'literally, a vampire novel' - in that it battens on to other novels and sucks their lifeblood, transforming as well as feeding off them. — Kim Newman

Writing. It's a trivial pursuit, hardly worth the effort, inconsequential on any cosmic level. It's just blood and sweat and guts and bone hauled out of our bodies and fed through a typewriter to slosh all over the platen. — Kim Newman

Relevance, Wilde once explained, was a careless habit that should not be over-indulged. — Kim Newman

He left the room, and closeted himself in the dark, buzzing space where he raised his wasps and plotted the courses of heavenly bodies. — Kim Newman

We need to stop the little girl," said Richard "pass me that shotgun. — Kim Newman