Top 35 Crime Fiction Quotes

In crime fiction, I cut my teeth on early Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, and Alan Furst. I always loved the writing of Hemingway and Faulkner. Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border Trilogy’ has been a huge influence; I think I read those novels four times.

The Ned Kelly is definitely the coolest of all the crime fiction awards, and if you think about it, it’s the only one that’s given for an entire continent.

There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story. I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It’s an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.

I had done 12 little romance books, and I decided I wanted to move into crime fiction.

The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It’s a country in love with crime fiction.

My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.

With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can’t read that.

I just really like the verve and muscle of good crime fiction, the narrative punch of it. The underlying principle of good crime fiction is an insistence on a kind of root democracy. I’ve always responded to that notion.

In the crime fiction section, you may just find a novel that talks about the place where you’re from and speaks to you about your life – or the life yours could have become if a little misfortune had come your way.

I’m the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist’s taste in music, or we’re told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

Most crime fiction, no matter how ‘hard-boiled’ or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics.

I get very tired of violence in crime fiction. Maybe it is what life is like, but I don’t want to do it in my books.

Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.

Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.

I’ve been writing since 1973. I’ve written nonfiction things of that nature, but I’m probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.

If you think the shifting tectonics of world history might make for a juicy crime fiction backdrop, the last decade or so has proved you right.

I’d read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy – I thought there must be another approach.

Writing books that people want to read is helpful – my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.

I’m snobby about books that aren’t crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there’s no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I’m like, ‘Gah, this obviously isn’t a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?’

I’d always wanted to write crime fiction. I loved Nancy Drew.

There’s an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction – a sweet spot there.

I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library – I’m a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction – so I’ll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I’ll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast.

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don’t recognise what I do is crime fiction.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in ‘Black Mask’ magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower – Stieg Larsson’s the exception. And I think we use the environment more.

I’ve always been drawn to the extremes of human behavior, and crime fiction is a great way to explore the lives and stories of fascinating people.

I’ve never been a great fan of crime fiction. I read Agatha Christie in my youth, but that’s all.

I think crime fiction is a great way to talk about social issues, whether ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ or ‘The Lovely Bones;’ violence is a way to open up that information you want to get out to the reader.

After I started writing crime fiction, I said to myself, ‘I may be limited, but the genre’s not. There’s no reason to change genres if I’m happy writing what I write.’ And I am.

When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn’t think to myself, ‘I’m going to model myself on Agatha Christie’ or ‘I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition’.

It wasn’t a decision to become a writer. I wanted to become a writer of crime fiction. I was very specific.

Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know.