Mystery Writer Quotes & Sayings

At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The bell seemed to have set off an
alarm in my brain, and I glimpsed at the mysterious envelope on my desk.

There was another item I should've gotten from my single-shoe salesman. — A.E.H. Veenman

I'm serious,' he said, though aware of how odd it was that he should choose to inform his wife of a personal crisis by comparing it to the experiences of a mystery novel heroine whom he had created. Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people as it sometimes was for a writer? And if so ... was there a book in that idea? — Dean Koontz

I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answerable to any of our formulas. — Flannery O'Connor

Mysteries are powerful, Cialdini says, because they create a need for closure. "You've heard of the famous Aha! experience, right?" he says. "Well, the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience." By creating a mystery, the writer-astronomer made dust interesting. He sustained attention, not just for the span of a punch line but for the span of a twenty-page article dense with information on scientific theories and experimentation. — Chip Heath

He who has experienced the mystery of the nature is full of life, full of love, full of joy. Radiance emanates from the whole existence itself, it does not know the meaning of holding back. It is pure giving-giving of love. For the great writers, love is like holding ice in hand, it just turns to water and they lose out their role but for a mystic the moment ice transforms to water love starts to flow. — Maitreya Rudrabhayananda

I have never, ever, not once, met a writer who said he or she would never read a mystery or a story set in some imagined future. — Russell Smith

My motto? Don't trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself."
"What kind of detective are you?" "A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?"
She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters." "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up"
"She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters."
"So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter ... Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway."
"A detective has their boundaries especially me. So mine shifted occasionally ... okay a lot"
"Beat it, Buster. My temper and this mace have a hair trigger."
"Interference could be lethal." I got right up in his face, hissing, "Don't push me, I'm hormonal."
I'm not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges. — Peggy A. Edelheit

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different. — James Ellroy

The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for. — Flannery O'Connor

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation. — Tana French

Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences. — Jesse Kellerman

Believers should be wary of overzealous attempts to prescribe "biblical sex," when sex - like beauty and like God - remains shaded with mystery. Paul likened it to the mystery of Christ's love for the Church, the writer of Proverbs to the inscrutable way of an eagle in the sky. If Christians have learned anything from our rocky two-thousand-year theological history, it's that we make the most beautiful things ugly when we try to systematize mystery. Even the writers of Scripture knew that some things were simply beyond their grasp. — Rachel Held Evans

We Catholics are very much given to the Instant Answer. Fiction doesn't have any. It leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery. St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. That is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do. — Flannery O'Connor

It's an honour to have such a wonderful international cast on board for this world famous murder mystery. Writer Stewart Harcourt has created an exquisite script. His attention to detail is impeccable. — David Suchet

As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds. — Gao Xingjian

In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery ... — Flannery O'Connor

The pen, a double-edged mystery: cuts the writer, heals the reader. — Jenim Dibie

Mystery writing involves solving a puzzle, but 'high suspense' writing is a situation whereby the writer thrusts the hero/heroine into high drama. — Iris Johansen

I think that leaving things to the imagination is what creates seduction. Sometimes one can have too much of a good thing. Part of the thrill of sex is the anticipation, so as a writer I'm conscious of that fact. In my view, sex is a mystery. If one focuses on the mechanics of sex or the awkwardness of two human beings communing physically, it takes away from the mysterious and sometimes transcendent aspects of it. — Sylvain Reynard

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it. — Dana Spiotta

I decided, long ago, back-room negotiations with a nine iron and a pen, witness tampering, and suppression of evidence weren't for me. That's
what was expected of an independent lawyer hired by Louis Fernoza.

I wanted the corner office overlooking a
cityscape, the fine car and house, and the ability to sleep at night with a clear conscience. I'd say I achieved it all but not without a price. — A.E.H. Veenman

The danger for the writer who is spurred by the religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine the mystery without the fact, and there will follow a further set of separations which are inimical to art. Judgement will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination.
They are separations which we see in our society and which exist in our writing. They are separations which faith tends to heal if we realize that faith is a 'walking in darkness' and not a theological solution to mystery. The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and storyteller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched... — Flannery O'Connor

I like surprises. I like mystery. I'm not the kind of person who goes to the writer's room and goes, I need to know the whole story so I can prepare. No, don't tell me anything! — Josh Holloway

I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer. — Pattiann Rogers

The writer is often faced with two choices
turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction. — Chinua Achebe

The writer doesn't want to disclose or instruct or advocate, he wants to transmute and disturb. He cherishes the mystery, he cares for it like a fugitive in his cabin, his cave. He
doesn't want to talk it into giving itself up. He would never turn it in to the authorities, the mass mind. The writer is somewhat of a fugitive himself, actually. He wants to escape his time, the obligations of his time, and, by writing, transcend
them. The writer does not like to follow orders, not even the orders of his own organizing intellect. — Joy Williams

The mystery form was very helpful for me as a beginning writer because mystery novels and suspense novels have a beginning, a middle and an end. — Jesse Kellerman

Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise ... Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories — Richard Bach

It may interest you to know that my breakup with Terry and this mystery did not happen concurrently in real life. That is a writer's device, which places Gabriel under even greater pressure when the mystery begins to reveal itself. — Armistead Maupin

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils. — Stephen King

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look? — Nancy Lynn Jarvis

I considered my home sanctuary from the judicial arena, far from the Fernoza Family legacy, and I had no intention of sharing it with anyone. — A.E.H. Veenman

The main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life. — Flannery O'Connor

I don't believe in writer's block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It's the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes if you force it and if it does, you'll probably regret what you wrote down on paper. — Lillian R. Melendez

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia — Edgar Allan Poe

Never Put A Date On your Dreams — Mary Fremont Schoenecker

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful. — Andrew Clements

If I really knew how to do good storytelling, I would be a writer. Mystery is not a huge part of it ... It's tension, it's relationships. I think it's a struggle. — Scott Cohen

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two. — Sara Sheridan

Writing for the love of writing. My muse makes no apologies under this pen name. ;) — Amanda Wylde

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. — Annie Dillard

There's many things that I am. And all of those things come together at some point. If somebody wants to limit me, you know and they'll say, 'Well, this is Walter Mosley, the mystery writer.' I don't like that. Because I do many things. — Walter Mosley

MG was nearly mythical, other than my entries - no interaction with users on
the off chance one was a Fernoza on the troll. And today proved I couldn't take a stranger bearing gifts at face-value. — A.E.H. Veenman

If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves - whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. — Flannery O'Connor

One of the hopes we have when we hear or read an interview with a mystery writer is to get inside the writer's head, to learn something we didn't know before. — Otto Penzler

Antiheroes
Aren't just black and white; they exploit the mystery and allure of shadow, of shades of grey. For the writer, they offer more story possibilities than heroes. They could tip either way, either supporting or fighting him. Reformed antiheroes could revert to bad ways, and even on the side of good, but they cab still use methods that would make a true hero blush or flinch. The only problem is that the characteristics that make them antiheroes can, if use for good, transform them into heroes; and then life tends to be much less entertaining. — Helen McCarthy

When I was in my early 20s, my dream was to write mystery novels. I wanted to do what my favourite crime writer, Ross Macdonald, did - crank out a book a year. The only problem - and it was a considerable one - was that I stank. — Linwood Barclay

We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance — Ernest Hemingway,

The alcohol had the code and mystery about it as a writer's drug, but I'm glad that's been debunked. But the trouble with the drinking, much as I hate to admit it, is it helped the work. — Barry Hannah

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech — Flannery O'Connor

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson

This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic qulaity. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic. — Ernest Hemingway,

The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here. — Don DeLillo

The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. — Flannery O'Connor

Any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply. — Sue Grafton

Writers are like onions, layers upon layers upon layers. — Luke Taylor

I am more of a suspense writer. A mystery writer solves mysteries. I am a 'high suspense' writer. — Iris Johansen

What's the importance of a photograph if you know the writer's work? But people still want the image, don't they? The writer's face is the surface of the work. It's a clue to the mystery inside. — Don DeLillo

I do not possess the ability to draw or paint.
I can't sing or dance.
I can't knit or sew.
But I am an artist.
I have the ability to put onto paper, words that tell an intriguing story.
I am a writer.
A writer is someone who, with just words, can paint a beautiful picture.
A writer can open up a world of imagination you didn't realize was possible.
When you open up a book and become so consumed in the story, you feel like you're a part of it ... you're standing next to that character and feeling the same way that character feels,
That's the art of a writer.
I am an artist.
My inspiration is the world around me.
My paintbrush is my words.
My easel is my computer.
My canvas is the mind of my reader. — Bri Justine

The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light. — Nadine Gordimer