The Murder Room Quotes & Sayings

The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed. — Mario Puzo

To me, still my favorite 3D film is 'Dial M for Murder.' I thought that was great. Hitchcock used it, could put you in the room, which I thought was fantastic, but I'm still not a devotee of 3D. — Joe Carnahan

A murder victim hung like art? That threw him back and flooded his gut with something akin to nausea, though the feeling faded quickly once he started to examine the crime scene. The man was suspended from a six foot marble statue right of the Troubadours auctioneer's podium, facing a large room with fifty chairs, twenty-five on each side. — Jerri Drennen

The Nazi radio blamed us for every filthy evil thing in this world. The Nazis called us subhuman and, in the next breath, superhuman; accused us of plotting to murder them, to rob them blind; declared that they had to conquer the world to prevent us from conquering the world. The radio said that we must be dispossessed of all we owned; that my father, who had dropped dead while working, had not really worked for our pleasant flat - the leather chairs in the dining room, the earrings in my mother's ears - that he had somehow stolen them from Christian Austria, which now had every right to take them back. — Edith Hahn Beer

I had so many unsold murder pictures lying around my room ... I felt as if I were renting out a wing of the City Morgue. — Weegee

He was a self-righteous know-it-all who had the breath of a dung beetle, a gray ponytail he barely pulled together from the bozo ring of hair clinging to his balding, freckled dome, and loved to drink, of all things, tea. Usually it was some sickly sweet-smelling herbal crap that was made in the hippie wasteland of Boulder, Colorado. The box was festooned with the image of a happy, dancing bear in a field of multicolored flowers and the tea had some idiotic name like Tai Chai. After work one evening, I snatched the box of tea bags from the break room and changed the recipe. I wasn't really worried that any other employees would use one of the tea bags because NO ONE DRINKS FUCKING TEA AT WORK, especially not the totally useless, noncaffeinated fairy tears reserved for old maids to sip while they watch Murder, She Wrote in bed with their legion of cats. — Shane Kuhn

You're the only girl I want. Even though you burst into my room and beat me up. I'm sorry I didn't give you the answers you wanted, but you looked like you were going to murder someone and I thought it might be me. — Mimi Strong

I remember lying on the floor of my room, staring at a black-and-white television for most of the '80s - watching 'Diff'rent Strokes,' 'Facts of Life,' 'Silver Spoons,' Saturday morning cartoons, and 'Murder, She Wrote' while eating an insane amount of Stouffer's French bread pizza. I was sucked into it all. — Jim Rash

Chester, listen to me!" Uncle Jeff said, holding his face. "It's a sacrifice, for God."
"This is so wrong!" Chester fought back.
"Chester! Be quiet!" he heard his mother's voice from the living room.
"Believe me, Chester. The animal doesn't feel a thing." Uncle Jeff tried to calm him down. "Its soul departs for heaven even before the blade touches its skin." he explained.
"Nice way to rationalize murder," said Chester, walking towards the stairs. — Sulaiman Dawood

I just hate to see you like this," he says. "Isn't there anything I can do?"

You could murder Vaughn. You could free Gabriel. You could help repair the damage that's been done to our home. By you.

This room is surely being recorded, though, and all I say is, "No."

He tilts my chin, and then he cups his hands around my ear and whispers, "I don't believe that."

I look at him, and I see the same look in his eyes as on the morning when I told him I was going to bring Linden home. Vaughn may be Rowan's benefactor, but I'm his twin sister. Even after this time spent apart, he can read me. — Lauren DeStefano

Why do we look to everyone else to see what to do? Why don't we understand that they're all as lost and scared as we are? Why do we look at a random consensus, shaped by opinions and powers that drift like dunes, as an absolute truth? If "normal" could change tomorrow, why are we such slaves to it? And where has "normal" gotten us, anyway? We live in a society that can't stop pollution or environmental destruction, that can't raise educational standards, can't stay healthy and non-obese, can't balance a budget, has no sense of fiscal responsibility, is in an economic tailspin, and is rife with crime and murder and violence. Most people in this "normal" society of ours begin sitting still in a room for six to eight hours beginning in childhood. They continue that for twelve years and then begin sitting still in a different room for another forty years, at which point they hope to retire and sit still in a chair in front of the TV until they die. — Johnny B. Truant

You accused me of murder. Do you make a habit of bringing schoolgirls into an interview room with murder suspects?'
He waved his hand. 'Oh, I was only joking about that. I don't really think you murdered someone. Unless you did, in which case I reserve the right to say I knew it all along. — Derek Landy

Hey, Kami. I was wondering if I could get a dance with the best-looking girl in the room."
"Sure," Kami said. "Go ask Angela. Take your life in your hands. I'll miss you and all, but I'm going to give her an alibi for the murder, because that's what best friends do. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, 'Dial M for Murder,' and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective. — Dario Argento

The room marked with a cross is not where the murder was committed, but the one that I occupy. — Jean Webster

Sloane sauntered into the observation room like she didn't have a care in the world, and scowled when she saw the coffee cup in my hand. "I came for coffee," she said. "If you have consumed all the coffee, I am going to straight-up fucking murder you, and drink a latte out of your skull. — Seanan McGuire

And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal. — Tim Wise

I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover. — Adrian McKinty

So what did you want to talk to Wesley about?" he asked me.
"Kelly likes him," I said. "So I figured while we were discussing Lady Macbeth's insanity and Duncan's murder, I could, you know, casually find out if he likes her too."
Colton didn't blink. "He likes her."
"He does? How do you know?"
He shrugged like it was a silly question. "We talk sometimes. He told me on the drive over he hoped she would be here."
"Then why hasn't he ever asked her out?"
"He's shy. And we're in the middle of wrestling season, midterms, and Christmas." Colton picked up the liter of soda. "Have a little patience."
I reached for the bowl of popcorn, but didn't start out of the kitchen yet. "Well can I hurry him along? Is there any chance he'll ask her out before this weekend?"
Colton shook his head at me, then walked toward the living room. "You're not quite grasping the nature of patience, Charlotte. — Janette Rallison

Tommy was persuaded that the murder charge was buttressed by that antagonism, which, from the prosecution's viewpoint, was probably ninety percent of their case. The bloodstains, being absent from the bunk room on the night of the murder, the discovery of the knife - all these things when taken together painted a compelling portrait. It was only upon examining each separately that the supposition unraveled somewhat. — John Katzenbach

After further introductions were made, we settled in the family room. Yes, the living room would have been nicer, but I wanted comfortable surroundings while plotting to murder one famed historical figure with another one.
~Cat — Jeaniene Frost

Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was hers. "This man came a guest into my house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven," she proclaimed to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand. "In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the king's justice."
She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen swords drawn as one or the look on Tyrion Lannister's face. — George R R Martin

A library is a room where the murders take place. — J.B. Morton

In the rest room next door there was a long, explosive sound of gas releasing, then a contented 'Ahhh.' Grace clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back the hysterical giggle that rose in her throat. She had to finish before he did, or he might hear her. The competition was the strangest in which she'd ever engaged. — Linda Howard

Once," Balinda begins softly, "when I was in the emergency room with my mother they brought in a murderer who had been shot and was dying, right there in front of us. I watched as the nurse touched his face and reassured him and I could not believe they were being so nice to him."
"What happened?" Jill asked.
"My mother rose up, took my arm, gripped it as if she was a weight lifter and said, 'he was a beautiful baby once and his mother loved him'. — Kris Radish

Every murder is a 'locked-room' case. The locked room is the criminal's mind. — Pablo De Santis

The Jews have made him [Yahweh] the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. — Thomas Paine

Sam hadn't left New York with Claire, he'd just arrived at the hotel that morning, checked in, put a few things away in his room and went downstairs to the extensive gift shop and saw the beautiful bouquet of island flowers and knew Claire would love them. The orchid in the middle of the arrangement was purple, which he knew was her favorite color. — Carolyn Gibbs

All major religions have rules against murder. If they didn't, there would be few converts. Well, at least few converts that you'd want to be in the same room with. But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people willing to kill in the name of their faith - that's true of most religions. — Rysa Walker

Julie McGuire gazed intently from her table in the filled-to-capacity dining room of the Wyndham Hotel. The Love To Murder Mystery Conference had saved the best for last. New York Times bestselling author, Tyler Jensen, now approached the podium. His entire bearing commanded attention, from — Morgan Mandel

Put it in terms of the not-too-serious, if you like. Who got into that locked room? And how was it done? And why should the cup have been moved again? We're up against the essential detective problems of who, how, and why. Simply because there was no murder or near-murder, does that make the mystery one bit less baffling? — Carter Dickson

I always loved watching and reading family-friendly mysteries growing up, like the shows Murder, She Wrote and Nancy Drew, and am thrilled to be bringing these New York Times best-selling books right into your living room on the small screen. — Candace Cameron

I welcome the opportunity to uphold our finest Wizarding traditions and values--' Like committing murder and cutting off people's ears, I suppose! Snape, headmaster! Snape in Dumbledore's study--Merlin's pants!" she shrieked, making both Harry and Ron jump. She leapt up from the table and hurtled from the room, shouting as she went, "I'll be back in a minute!"
"'Merlin's pants'?" repeated Ron, looking amused. "She must be upset. — J.K. Rowling

I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I'm very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off.
I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watch. — Iain Banks

The elaborateness of the cover story made him feel like a criminal. This is what criminals must feel like as they prepare to do a job, he thought, constructing a world based on the fullness (and falseness) of the cover story. And yet he was not going to commit a murder or rob a bank or burglarize a house. He was only going to do something so normal the wonder was that it did require such an elaborate preparation. But it was the combination of secretness and commonness that made it so sweet. It was what everyone wanted and almost nobody did, to slip out of or through the structure that gave your life a shape into a room where your life took the shape you wanted it to have, to love and be loved by someone perfectly beautiful. — Ron Loewinsohn

Rebus nodded his understanding. The Murder Room was quiet when he reached it. Roy Frazer was reading a paper. "Finished with this?" Rebus asked, picking up another. Frazer nodded. "Chicken phal," Rebus explained, rubbing his stomach. "Hold all my calls and let everyone know the shunkie's off-limits." Frazer nodded and smiled. Saturday morning on the bog with the paper: everyone had done it at one time. — Ian Rankin

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing. — P.D. James

Cordelia!"
She staggered to a stop and slowly turned as her father's voice reverberated around the room.
"You just accused your brothers of trying to commit murder."
"No, Father. From this day forward, Cameron is the only brother I have. If you allow these two to remain in your home after what I have just told you, then I also have no father."
"You're as high-spirited and stubborn as your mother. I warned Leigh that he needed to keep a tight rein on you, but he wouldn't listen."
"Dallas isn't one to follow in other men's footsteps. Giving him permission to marry me was the finest gift you could have ever given me. — Lorraine Heath

Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Sundays were marked by exhaustion. The moral code by which they lived was that of cleanliness, respectability and prudence. Religion was for those who had the time for it, a middle-class indulgence. — P.D. James

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden

Tallyho, friends of Asher!" Asher had impeccable timing. He waltzed into the room and hopped up on the computer table, his legs dangling down, like he didn't have a care in the world. Like the tension in the room wasn't thick enough that you could have cut it with a knife. "Am I interrupting something?" he asked blithely. Just Henry telling me he thinks my sister might be working to cover up his grandfather's murder. Henry must have read something in my expression, because a hint of remorse flashed across his features. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure. — P.D. James

I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favorite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer. When, therefore, he suddenly announced his intention of setting out for the scene of the drama it was only what I had both expected and hoped for. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It felt oily inside her head. There were strings of Xavier Stancliff caught inside of her, holding on and spiderwebbing out as he plotted and waited and thought: this is all the bitch deserves. Swallowing, Sandra pushed herself off the bed. It was late and the room was dark. She could see the bundled lump of Jack beneath his own covers. He'd left the television on and the light flickered down the tiny hall. Shadows danced and Sandra shivered as she left the room.

In another life, she would have told Danny and Jack about the man. Danny would have whispered, "It's alright," and smoothed back her hair from her face and kissed her, lips dry and coarse on her forehead. Then he and Jack would've left while she was sleeping. They would've trampled the flowers and climbed into Xavier Stanliff's window and when Sandra woke up there would have been one less man in the world. — Angele Gougeon

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

I need to know when,' he said, 'In this case when is more important than how. Do you have a time-table?' For although images of this murder now surrounded him, and the parts of the body had become emblems of pursuit, violence and flight, they were as broken and indistinct as the sounds of a quarrel in a locked room. — Peter Ackroyd

She turned off all the lights in the duplex and peered out the windows, moving from one room to the next to see if she could catch sight of the a black sedan. Security lights and streetlights in her complex cast a strange orange glow on the misty snow. It looked like the perfect night for a murder. — Terry Spear

You cannot murder someone in the Safe Room, okay? — Josin L. McQuein

He looked with horror round the room: nobody could say he hadn't done right to get away from this, to commit any crime ... When the man opened his mouth he heard his father speaking, that figure in the corner was his mother: he bargained for his sister and felt no desire ... He turned to Rose, 'I'm off,' and felt the faintest tinge of pity for goodness which couldn't murder to escape. — Graham Greene

I am thinking,' he remarked quietly, 'whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace. — Wilkie Collins

It was murder - strangulation - but one need not say that the claw-mark on Mrs. Suydam's throat could not have come from her husband's or any other human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an instant in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory, seems to have been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of the word 'LILITH'. One need not mention these things because they vanished so quickly - as for Suydam, one could at least bar others from the room until one knew what to think oneself. The doctor has distinctly assured Malone that he did not see IT. The open porthole, just before he turned on the lights, was clouded for a second with a certain phosphorescence, and for a moment there seemed to echo in the night outside the suggestion of a faint and hellish tittering; — H.P. Lovecraft

The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a good murder; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes break on their editions. — Pete Hamill

He just didn't look like the kind of creep that would messily murder a woman in her hotel room; he looked like the kind of creep that could line her up in the sights of an assassins rifle without a shred of emotion. — Karen Marie Moning

Information can be harmful when you're not ready for it. ['The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes'] — Richard Walter

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic interests, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another - and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rulers, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice. — Ayn Rand

Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.
'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.
Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight. — R.D. Ronald

I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me. — Shirley Jackson

Whenever Elliot Norther's wife was nervous she baked. With the murder of Harriet Mason, her husband's close colleague at the Faculty, she had been unable to resist a couple of Victoria sponges. During the frenzied press speculation about the identity of the murderer, a Dundee cake had appeared, followed swiftly by a Battenberg and a Lemon Drizzle. Since news of the Wildencrust murder broke, the kitchen, dining room and study had come to resemble the storerooms of an industrial bakery, every surface heaving with the weight of sponge and cream. Yesterday, having at last been overwhelmed by the fear and rumour that swept the town, she had taken herself off to her mother's house in Hampstead, leaving her husband to soldier on alone. When he had last seen his wife, Elliot Norther noticed that she had been putting the finishing touches to an impressive, triple-tiered wedding cake, beating a batch of royal icing into a sickly paste. — Robert Clear

Back, devil! Return thee to Hell!"
The beast rolled its eyes. "I am not a devil, fool. Do you ever wonder why you seek the Devil with such vigor? I shall tell you. Because you cannot face your own wickedness. The truth is there is no Devil making you torture, rape, murder, and sodomize one another, or making you destroy the very land that feeds you. There is only you. So look at yourself, for you are the only devil in this room. — Brom