Cozy Murder Mystery Quotes & Sayings

The best way to succeed in this world is to act on the advice you give to others. — Napoleon Hill

a Sicilian grandma is a formidable opponent — Traci Andrighetti

P.I. Cassie Cruise--You don't have to like her, but you damn well better respect her — S.L. Ellis

A girl had to do what a girl had to do and it looked as if this girl's immediate future included chicken Caesar salad, chocolate cake, and Cary Grant. — Leslie Meier

Lucy had no complaints about her dinner. Anything was fine with her as long as she didn't have to cook it. — Leslie Meier

In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity. — Konrad Adenauer

It's a small-town rule: Never speak ill of the dead until the estate has paid the outstanding bills. — Leslie Meier

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature; to make beautiful things has more. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The historian in me love to uncover things, and the mother in me hates to be lied to...[Why Dotsy investigates murder] — Maria Hudgins

He was the best lover I'd ever had. So far ahead of the competition, I couldn't even recall their names or faces. — Cara McKenna

The years pass so quickly now that I can't keep my mental image of myself up to date. [Mature Dotsy deals with her age] — Maria Hudgins

Her eyes popped open in time to see flames shoot up behind the first-floor windows of Angie's Books. Angie! Where was Angie? Where were her children? The bookstore owner lived in the apartment above her shop with sixteen-year-old Beth and twelve-year-old Bradley.
The Moosetookalook Fire Department was located right next door, housed in part of the town's redbrick municipal building. The overhead door had already been raised. As Liss watched, unable to move, unable to look away, the truck pulled out, maneuvering so that it could get closer to the burning building. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then the distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt. — Cormac McCarthy

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well. — Anton Chekhov

I've been to livelier funerals," grumbled Herb. — Leslie Meier

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
"The police should be in it, not us. We're out of here." Bill did an about-face to retrace their route to the door.
Piper whipped out a hand and snagged him by the shirttail. Her tone returned to crisp and decisive. "Slow down, Roadrunner. I'm not ready to leave. We've got work to do."
Incredulous, he stared gape-mouthed at her. "You better explain," he said.
She wiggled her nose. "I'm growing nosier by the second about the circumstances surrounding Anna's murder. — Ed Lynskey

An overweight Maine coon cat dozed in an open bedroom window, his bulk pressed against the screen so that the gentle breeze of the summer night could ruffle his long yellow fur. With a start, he went on alert. A moment later, he leapt from the windowsill to the top of the dresser and from there to the foot of the bed. He landed squarely on Liss MacCrimmon Ruskin's bare legs. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

When Fortune smiles, I smile to think how quickly she will frown. — Robert Southwell

Every sitcom needs their straight man or straight woman. — Aarti Mann

You don't have the right to be left alone with that abortion decision. The child is present ... you are not alone. — Douglas Wilson

Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham:
"You love to figure out things as much as I do," Piper said.
"Like what?" Bill asked.
"You fix broken stuff," Piper replied.
"Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said. — Ed Lynskey

Murder was apparently too common-place in the big city to attract much notice.
Poor Luther, thought Lucy, as she headed back to the hotel. Even in death he was only a big fish in a small pond. — Leslie Meier

Another holiday, another murder. At least no one got murdered at Thanksgiving dinner! How did I end up, in the season of peace and goodwill toward men, investigating another homicide?"
~ Kay Driscoll

Murder Under the Tree (A Kay Driscoll Mystery Book 2) - Coming November 14. — Susan Bernhardt

Access to the public library should be a basic human right. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

In fact, she realized when they finally found their table and sat down, every single woman at the banquet was dressed in some variation of back. Black silk, black chiffon, black with beads, black with rhinestones, short black cocktail dresses, black evening dresses, and even black pantsuits. All black. There was no way she was going to get lost in this crowd, not in her pink-and-orange poppy print — Leslie Meier

I can't help wishing that the killer had waited until after this weekend to do him in. Or, better yet, had murdered him somewhere else entirely. Neither the Highland games nor this town needs the bad publicity murder generates."
"I'm sure Jason Graye would have preferred not to be murdered at all. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

If looks could kill, she'd be a dead woman. — Leslie Meier

She made an inarticulate sound of distress at the sight that met her eyes. It was a fire, and it was the bookstore on the far side of the square that was burning. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

Within the same hour as the murder took place, Isabel Trumbo sat in her armchair dozing, the Alaskan Outdoor magazine on her lap. Her kid sister Alma fidgeted in the other armchair, from time to time picking up her newspaper folded over to the day's crossword puzzle. — Ed Lynskey

wanted to make him know that he had friends in this world tied to him by something stronger than blood, ties that could never fade or dissolve. That he would never be hungry or cold or motherless while I still drew breath. That he didn't need two hands, or a street address, or clean lungs, or social grace, or a happy disposition to be precious and irreplaceable. That no matter what our future held, my first task would always be to kick a hole in the world and make a space for him where he could safely be his eccentric self. Most — Hope Jahren

She was halfway through the revolving door when the thought hit her; she was the one who had seen Junior and Luther fighting before the banquet. She was the one had told Detective Sullivan. Overcome with guilt, she grabbed Ted's arm and faced him.
"It's because of me," she said. "Junior was arrested because of me! — Leslie Meier

I recommend people develop a fear of elevators, like I have. Even if something is on the tenth floor, I'm walking up. If you don't have claustrophobia, pretend you do and take the stairs everywhere! It ends up being so healthy! — Tamara Taylor

Except for the shapes of the windows, backlit by the streetlights that dotted the perimeter of the Moosetookalook town square, Liss could see very little in the darkness of the room she shared with her husband. The two front windows were raised as far as they would go, since Liss had been taught at an early age that fresh air was one of nature's best sleep aids. She had never had any reason to doubt that small bit of folk wisdom. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

Lawyers aren't the most popular people, Miss Allen ... - Murder in Hand — Celia Conrad

That the utopia I thought the online world created, where people don't have to be ashamed of what they love and could connect with each other regardless of what they looked like, was really a place where people could steep themselves in their own worldview until they became willfully blind to everyone else's. I — Felicia Day

There are still a lotta nice Sicilian boys in New Orleans. (A nonna's advice to a zitella.) — Traci Andrighetti

Liss squinted, searching frantically for Angie and Beth and Bradley. She couldn't spot them anywhere. Her chest rose and fell in time with her agitated breathing. What if they were still inside? What if they were trapped?
Struggling for calm, Liss told herself that they must have escaped. Angie was scrupulous about changing her smoke-alarm batteries. She and her kids would have had plenty of time to get out. Heck, Angie was probably the one who'd alerted the fire department.
But where was she? Where were Beth and Bradley? — Kaitlyn Dunnett

Carlina with her cat-like eyes who didn't fit into any category he knew. (Commissario Garini's difficulty with his prime suspect.) — Beate Boeker