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Detective Work Quotes & Sayings

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Top Detective Work Quotes

Detective Work Quotes By Raymond Chandler

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it. — Raymond Chandler

Detective Work Quotes By Mary McCarthy

I once started a detective story to make money-but I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse! — Mary McCarthy

Detective Work Quotes By Ed Lynskey

From Chapter 1:
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

Detective Work Quotes By Lawrence H. Levy

Mary's reading list betrayed her passion for forensics and detective novels. There were so many scientific journals and books randomly strewn around her little one-room apartment that it looked like the Great White Hurracane had struck inside.

It's all part of my decorating scheme Mary would quip. This may look like the work of a slob, but if you look closer, you'll realize it's my way of giving color to an awfully drab floor. — Lawrence H. Levy

Detective Work Quotes By Agatha Christie

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.
Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant. — Agatha Christie

Detective Work Quotes By Dorothy Simpson

A good detective not only has to be intelligent, persevering and prepared to do enless boring routine work, he also needs one other quality: Intuition. I see it rather as the ability to make connections which are there but are not immediately apparent. Subterranean connections. — Dorothy Simpson

Detective Work Quotes By Ty Cobb

The longer I live, the longer I realize that batting is more a mental matter than it is physical. The ability to grasp the bat, swing at the proper time, take a proper stance; all these are elemental. Batting is rather a study in psychology, a sizing up of a pitcher and catcher and observing little details that are of immense importance. It's like the study of crime, the work of a detective as he picks up clues. — Ty Cobb

Detective Work Quotes By James S.A. Corey

I don't see anything," Miller said. "What's it look like?"
"The eye of an angry God?" Elvi said.
"Oh," Miller said. The heavy plates of his robotic body clicked and hissed against each other as he shifted. "Yeah, well that's probably it, then. Good work. — James S.A. Corey

Detective Work Quotes By Jill Lepore

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

Detective Work Quotes By Dashiell Hammett

Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there'd be no sense to it. That's the fix I am in. I don't know anything else, don't enjoy anything else, don't want to know or enjoy anything else. You can't weight that against any sum of money. Money's good stuff. I haven't anything against it. — Dashiell Hammett

Detective Work Quotes By Kenneth Eade

An alibi is only as good as its details. — Kenneth Eade

Detective Work Quotes By Karen Traviss

Whether I build a character from the ground up or develop one, whether within my own copyright or in licensed work, I can step into that character's mind. It takes a kind of voluntary dissociation akin to method acting, military planning, marketing, or detective work: to think like the other guy and work out what he's going to do next. — Karen Traviss

Detective Work Quotes By Richard Castle

I actually do have a motto," said Heat. "It's 'Never forget who you work for.'" And as she voiced the words, Nikki felt a creeping unease. It wasn't exactly shame, but it was close. For the first time it sounded hollow. Fake. Why? She examined herself, trying to see what was different. The stress, that was new. And when she looked at that, she recognized that the hardest part of her day lately was working to avoid confrontation with Captain Montrose. That's when it came to her. In that moment, sitting nearly naked in Rook's living room, playing some silly nineteenth-century parlor game, she came to an unexpected insight. In that moment Nikki woke up and saw with great clarity who she had become - and who she had stopped being. Without noticing it, Heat had begun seeing herself as working for her captain and had lost sight of her guiding principle, that she worked for the victim. — Richard Castle

Detective Work Quotes By G.K. Chesterton

The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet. — G.K. Chesterton

Detective Work Quotes By Arthur Conan Doyle

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Detective Work Quotes By Jed Rubenfeld

I know he is
sensitive
on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men. — Jed Rubenfeld

Detective Work Quotes By Donald J. Sobol

The case called for plain, old-fashioned police leg work! — Donald J. Sobol

Detective Work Quotes By Michael Connelly

The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective. — Michael Connelly

Detective Work Quotes By Richard Castle

I'm trying to figure the rules. This isn't yin and yang, it's more like yin and yank. The past few days I've been going, OK, she doesn't mix the ... romance so well with the single-mindedness of the police work. So it gets me wondering, Is the solution for me to give up our working relationship? Stop my magazine research so we can-?"
Nikki grabbed him into a deep kiss. Then she pulled away and said, "Will you shut up? — Richard Castle

Detective Work Quotes By Richard Castle

It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body. After she unbuckled her seat belt, after she pulled a stick pen from the rubber band on the sun visor, after her long fingers brushed her hip to feel the comfort of her service piece, what she always did was pause. Not long. Just the length of a slow deep breath. That's all it took for her to remember the one thing she will never forget. Another body waited. She drew the breath. And when she could feel the raw edges of the hole that had been blown in her life, Detective Nikki Heat was ready. She opened the car door and went to work ... Heat could have made it easier on herself by parking closer, but this was another of her rituals: the walk up. Every crime scene was a flavor of chaos, and these two hundred feet afforded the detective her only chance to fill the clean slate with her own impressions. — Richard Castle

Detective Work Quotes By Don DeLillo

When I think of highly plotted novels I think of detective fiction or mystery fiction, the kind of work that always produces a few dead bodies. But these bodies are basically plot points, not worked-out characters. The book's plot either moves inexorably toward a dead body of flows directly from it, and the more artificial the situation the better. Readers can play off their fears by encountering the death experience in a superficial way. A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot, makes it less fearful by containing it in a kind of game format. [from an interview with DeCurtis] — Don DeLillo

Detective Work Quotes By James S.A. Corey

The detective had been watching the video of Julie Mao's fight with her captors over and over again while they'd waited on Naomi and Amos to finish their work. It gave Holden the disquieting feeling that Miller was storing the footage in his head. Fuel for something he planned to do later. — James S.A. Corey

Detective Work Quotes By Jonathan Kellerman

I'd been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It's detective work, of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. (179) — Jonathan Kellerman

Detective Work Quotes By Stefan Petrucha

Your novels show only the tiniest fraction of detective work, the brilliant crime, the tantalizing clues, the dramatic chase, the final battle atop a lofty peak with ocean waves crashing down below, and then ... justice served! If they wrote about the real world, four-fifths of the story would consist of the hero sitting in a library for months and following false leads. — Stefan Petrucha

Detective Work Quotes By Alexander McCall Smith

Now the tea began to do its work- as it always did- and the world that only a few minutes previously had seemed so bleak started to seem less so. — Alexander McCall Smith

Detective Work Quotes By Michelle Monaghan

I was at the beginning stages of my pregnancy, and it never really feels real anyway, until you actually start showing and you start to feel the baby kick. Fortunately I didn't have any morning sickness or anything like that. And I really didn't want to be distracted from the work at hand, so I didn't tell anybody. It was really just towards the end of shooting where I was about five months, where I needed to tell a costume designer[ of the True Detective]. — Michelle Monaghan

Detective Work Quotes By Steven David Levine

Hard work is great. It buys you more tickets to the luck lottery. — Steven David Levine

Detective Work Quotes By Mary Lee Settle

When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again. — Mary Lee Settle

Detective Work Quotes By James Ponsoldt

You just work really hard and scrutinize. What is it called in politics? "Opposition research"? You want to do the detective work on your client so to speak before your opponent can dig it up. We're vetting everything thoroughly. — James Ponsoldt

Detective Work Quotes By Derek Landy

Detective Harris smiled good-naturedly as he sat down. "Other Inspector?"
"The one who just left."
"Hmm? Who was that, then?"
"Detective Inspector Me."
"Detective Inspector You?"
"No, Me. That's his ... He said that's his name. You just passed him. He was with a girl on work experience and a boy with spiky hair."
Harris blinked at him. "I didn't pass anyone, Mr Dunne, and I'm the only Detective Inspector on duty right now."
Kenny stared at him. "Then ... then who the hell was I just speaking to? — Derek Landy

Detective Work Quotes By Catherine Aird

If there was one thing which Sloan had learned over the years it was that you should never underestimate the element of luck in detective work. — Catherine Aird

Detective Work Quotes By Bill Harvey

If you do not know your purpose, you have detective work to do. The clues will be in your life to date, in the things you are good at, the things you enjoy doing, in your dreams and your daydreams. — Bill Harvey

Detective Work Quotes By Ilona Andrews

I'm an angel of death. I don't need night school, woman. You should just give up on this detective shit and start killing people for a living. It's simple, honest work, and you ain't got the brains for anything else. — Ilona Andrews

Detective Work Quotes By Abramelin Keldor

The only way Magick ever has power is when its secrets are truly secret. Once too many people know how it works, then it doesn't work anymore. — Abramelin Keldor

Detective Work Quotes By Raymond Chandler

They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o'-shanter which wasn't any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:
You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective? — Raymond Chandler

Detective Work Quotes By Jean Fritz

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on. — Jean Fritz

Detective Work Quotes By Samuel Hopkins Adams

Anything is easy to the man who sees ... The open eye of the open mind
that has more to do with real detective work than all the deduction and induction and analysis ever devised. — Samuel Hopkins Adams

Detective Work Quotes By Nic Pizzolatto

'True Detective' is a densely layered work with resonant details and symbology and rich characterization under the guise of one of the forms of this mystery genre. That's what we shoot for. — Nic Pizzolatto

Detective Work Quotes By Douglas Adams

Research. Government archives. Detective work. Few lucky guesses. Easy. — Douglas Adams

Detective Work Quotes By Carolyn Keene

Chuckling to herself, Nancy said aloud, Romance and detective work won't mix tonight! — Carolyn Keene

Detective Work Quotes By Theodore Jerome Cohen

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Romans 12:19
King James Version

What most people don't seem to understand is that sometimes, He subcontracts the work!

Detective-Investigator Louis Martelli,
NYPD — Theodore Jerome Cohen

Detective Work Quotes By Carroll Bryant

We are all doomed, Yankee detective. One day I will come into work and see myself lying on this slab. — Carroll Bryant

Detective Work Quotes By Meg Cabot

Wow," he said, his voice as sarcastic as before. "I had no idea I was related to such an accomplished detective. Is that where you were the past couple of days? Doing undercover work? Tell me, Detective Oliviera, what else did you and your CSI team learn during your amazing investigation?"
"She learned," Mr. Liu said, taking a menacing step forward, "that boys who smart off to ladies often get slapped. — Meg Cabot

Detective Work Quotes By William Ritter

Detective work is neither a happy nor a satisfying business, Miss Rook," said Jackaby, settling in as the amber buildings sailed past our window. "Marlowe will understand." "I don't understand at all." Commissioner Marlowe kept his voice low and even as we sat across from him the following morning. — William Ritter

Detective Work Quotes By Jon Michaelsen

It takes a certain kind of man willing to work long, grueling hours in a career offering few rewards. — Jon Michaelsen

Detective Work Quotes By Shirley Jackson

I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do. — Shirley Jackson

Detective Work Quotes By Nick Harkaway

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story. — Nick Harkaway

Detective Work Quotes By Errol Morris

I used to work as a private detective years and years ago. — Errol Morris

Detective Work Quotes By Robert Galbraith

The leg was sent to Robin,' Strike reminded him. 'There's as much chance that she's seen this woman previously as I have. She's my partner. We work the same jobs.'

Robin glanced sideways at Strike. He had never before described her as his partner to somebody else, or not within Robin's hearing. He was not looking at her. Robin switched her attention back to Wardle. Apprehensive though she was, after hearing Strike put her on equal professional footing with himself she knew that, whatever she was about to see, she would not let herself, or him, down. — Robert Galbraith

Detective Work Quotes By Arthur Conan Doyle

It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force ... There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force,' Holmes remarked. 'The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men's lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Detective Work Quotes By Michelle M. Tokarczyk

American literature has, since the time of the Puritans, featured the jeremiad as a prolonged complaint, a prophet's indictment of his society characteristic of work such as the muckrakers' novels or Allan Ginsberg's "Howl." Doctorow struggles to accommodate this form to his artistry (as successful practitioners of the work have always done). To this end, he has repeatedly adapted genres such as the Western, the romance, and the detective novel, often playing with accepted conventions, and thus avoiding didacticism. — Michelle M. Tokarczyk

Detective Work Quotes By Diana Rowland

He leaned back in his chair. "Detective Gillian, what I want to say at this moment would no doubt be considered extremely inappropriate and unprofessional, even though it would be meant as a compliment to you." Then he surprised me by laughing. "Screw it. You're a devious, clever bitch, and I'm glad you work for me. — Diana Rowland

Detective Work Quotes By David Simon

For a detective or street police, the only real satisfaction is the work itself; when a cop spends more and more time getting aggravated with the details, he's finished. The attitude of co-workers, the indifference of superiors, the poor quality of the equipment - all of it pales if you still love the job; all of it matters if you don't. — David Simon

Detective Work Quotes By Andrew Vachss

Most investigators don't even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes they'd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often. — Andrew Vachss

Detective Work Quotes By James Marsh

I wanted to be a police detective. In my work, particularly in documentaries, I am obsessed with finding things out, seeking ever-new facts and perspectives - each project can involve years of research. — James Marsh

Detective Work Quotes By Agatha Christie

I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. My system is based on his - though of course I have progressed rather further. He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever. — Agatha Christie

Detective Work Quotes By Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and things themselves are detective. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Detective Work Quotes By Arthur Conan Doyle

Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'
Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in gratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as "very inferior".'
Have you not learned, my esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Detective Work Quotes By Michelle Monaghan

It was the first time I worked with Matthew McConaughey [in the True Detective].They're fun guys [with Woody Harrelson]. They don't take life at all too seriously, but yet they take their work very seriously. And both of them are just so committed to character and the story. — Michelle Monaghan

Detective Work Quotes By William Ritter

Excuse me! May I have your attention, please!" he called out, completely unnecessarily. Every eye was already on the mad detective, who was hunching slightly under the rearing hooves of the marble horse. "Yes, hello, everyone. Many of you know me, but if you have never had occasion to work with me-or to arrest me-my name is R.F.Jackaby. — William Ritter