c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The figure in the cloak had turned, waving a fist in the air in a gesture of pure spite. ‘Damn you!’ My whispered curse came as I drew my revolver, pausing only to take aim. Two shots rang out, shattering the very air between us. I could not be sure if the heavy bullets had found their mark; the fiend whirling around behind a chimney-stack a moment after I fired. A groan from the blackness below-it was Holmes!. - John Watson, Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders
— Mark Sohn, Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders: An Account of the Matter by John Watson M.D.
... only one man could have been responsible for their deaths: Richard III.
— Alison Weir, The Princes in the Tower
We are at an impasse...There will come a time, when we can no longer safely approach any Muslim (or radicalised liberal), since we simply cannot trust that they won't lash out with the intent to kill. 
— Anita B. Sulser PhD, We Are One
I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?""I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't.""Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said. His voice was deep. His beak was large. He wore a black mohair suit and a black string tie. His little red mouth was obscene. "You're looking at the situation through a red haze of hate," he said. "What you need are the calm, wise services of a murder counsellor, who can plan the job for you, and save you an unnecessary trip to the hot squat.""Where do I find one?" I said."You've found one, " he said."You're crazy," I said."That's right," he said. "I've been in and out mental institutions all my life. That makes my services all the more appealing. If I were to testify against you, your lawyer would have no trouble establishing that I was a well-known nut, and a convicted felon besides.""What was the felony?" I said."A little thing - practising medicine without a license," he said."Not murder then?" I said."No," he said, "but that doesn't mean I haven't murdered. As a matter of fact, I murdered almost everyone who had anything to do with convicting me of practising medicine without a license." He looked at the ceiling, did some arithmetic. "Twenty-two, twenty-three - maybe more," he said. "Maybe more. I've killed them over a period of years, and I haven't read the paper every single day.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction
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, Kilt at the Highland Games
I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not *just* a liar. If you take something that does not belong to you, you're not *just* a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not *just* a killer.
— Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
I think Peter was murdered because of what he found out about the company.
— James Frazee, The Mosquito Bites
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, Kilt at the Highland Games
Man is the only predator who hunts his own.
— Kenneth Eade, Political Thriller: Unwanted, an American Assassin Story: an assassination, vigilante justice and terrorism thriller
I was almost twelve years old when I decided to kill my parents.
— Armando Lucas Correa, The German Girl
Where there's a will, there's a potential for murder
— Brahms Lewis
The common theme here was contempt: a poisonous disregard for human life. For Vladimir Putin’s critics have an uncanny habit of turning up dead.
— Luke Harding, A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West
Acardi! We should have killed him on the spot and you wouldn't let me! You didn't even listen.""Fine," I said, glaring at him. "Next time you want to commit murder, give me a call. You dagger them, I'll chop them into little tiny pieces and toss them into the East River."For the first time, I noticed the shadows beneath his eyes, the gauntness on his face. He lowered his voice, rubbing his temples as if he had a migraine. "This isn't the time for sarcasm, Liana.""No, apparently it's murder time.
— M. Kane, Queen of Thieves
What do you want?’'I want to play,’ he said.I stared at him. 'Just like that. You don’t know what I’m involved in, but you want a piece of it.’'Following you around lets me kill a lot of people.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, The Lunatic Cafe
You should never attack a necromancer in a cemetery
—  it’s like chasing Rambo into a building full of loaded guns. Some people seem to help you kill them.
If looks could kill, she’d be a dead woman.
— Leslie Meier, Father's Day Murder
It’s a small-town rule: Never speak ill of the dead until the estate has paid the outstanding bills.
— Leslie Meier, Father's Day Murder
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, Father's Day Murder
I know mine own!"--Walter Emmett Velvet, the Antichrist
— A.R. Braun, Autonomy
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, Father's Day Murder
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, Father's Day Murder
Lucy had no complaints about her dinner. Anything was fine with her as long as she didn’t have to cook it.
— Leslie Meier, Father's Day Murder
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, Kilt at the Highland Games
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, Kilt at the Highland Games
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, Kilt at the Highland Games
Murder is not a suitable topic of conversation for a young lady.
— Jennifer Donnelly, These Shallow Graves
Sam was staring at Claire with about the same amazement as his brother had shown. Claire didn’t seem to realize it, or else she was too preoccupied to think of it, but she was the second thunderbolt that had fallen on this long-hidebound household in as many days. First one of the hated race of doctors had been shoehorned in on them as the only thing that might get them out of an already nightmarish situation, and now this matter-of-fact slip of a girl had pushed into it of her own accord. They must have felt like the world was coming down around their ears.
— Elisabeth Grace Foley, Left-Hand Kelly
When a guy goes out there and kills somebody, he might look at himself as the winner. But in truth he’s also a loser, because now he would be lost in the system. If you were listening to the news recently, some people you know well are doing 45, and 64 years for murder. They might have won their fight, but they lost their lives to the system. Franco ‘Co’ Bethel, former gang leader and right hand man to Scrooge.
— Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
While police internal affairs is allowed to protect corrupt police officers that engage in unethical behaviors, illegal activities or murder, there will always be a genuine mistrust by the common people.
— Steven Magee
It was like leading people to the edge of a cliff, showing them the view, and then shoving them off.
— Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors
Police intentionally murdering a mentally unstable person will always be unacceptable when there are numerous other non-lethal options available to them.
— Steven Magee
But I did it! That's the thing—I did it! What will my father say when he hears I murdered a man? Lorna, I see what I did. I murdered myself, too! I've been running around in circles. Now I'm smashed!
— Clifford Odets, Golden Boy
In 2012, an estimated 14,827 persons were murdered in the United States.-- Federal Bureau of Investigation
— Gennaro F. Vito, Criminology: Theory, Research, and Policy
I'm not a woman and i'm not a man, i'm just a thing with breasts and a penis".
— Stuart  Francis, GUAN: For strong stomachs only!
A newborn is murderous/but can't do anything about it.
— Kathleen Ossip, The Do-Over
one of those world builders who do othing but destroy,
— John le Carré, Call for the Dead
If they were going to kill you, would they knock?
— Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
The English murder their meat twice: once when they shoot it, again when they cook it. 'Drôle, n'est-ce pas'?
— Peter Mayle, A Good Year
Perhaps it is true that all that happens is in accordance with Your will, and thus it is good. But sometimes You leave blood on Your instruments.
— Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
Harry looked at him and you could see the murder come in his face. ... Harry didn't say anything, but you could see the killing go out of his face and his eyes came open natural again.
— Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not
Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them...
— Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
You wake up and from where are sure that this which read on the pasport is true?? Are you sure??It's possible to be murder, to be a killer or somebody else!
— Deyth Banger
Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.
— Katherine Dunn
As the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.
— NisiOisiN
Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.The images we seldom see are the aftermath of violent deaths. Your family newspaper will not print photos of the puddled suicide who jumped from the fourteenth floor. No car wrecks with the body parts unevenly distributed, no murder victim sprawled in his own juices. Despite the endless preaching against violent crime, despite the enormous and avid audience for mayhem, these images are taboo.
— Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook
The only reason I'd lift my skirt is to pull a pistol and plug you in the head.
— Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy
Death. I have fed that foul beast a feast, and yet it still hungers. I have killed… many. My hands are covered in blood that will not wash out, blood that will stain them for as long as I draw breath.
— [author:Emmanuel M Arriaga|14242139], [book:Foundra: The Rift War|26208458]
That was what murder was-as easy as that!But afterwards you went on remembering...
— Agatha Christie
I guess that makes everyone in boots on the ground a murderer
— Kenneth Eade, Beyond All Recognition
Even if you had committed a murder, I would have committed one too just so I could be with you… Even if you could not speak, see, hear or walk... I would have always, do you hear me, always stayed with you!
— Rom Amor
We live in a world where you can be put to death for your belief and shows how humanity judges in a dreadful motif.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
This world disappoints you, does it not?” Quinn asked. “Your crusade was intended to create something exceptional, exquisite even. But you have become lost amongst your own desires, my friend. What you are doing no longer falls under the rubric of surgery… you work in darker hues. Kelly must be the last. Any more and the East End of London will explode. We already have Lusk and his Vigilante Committee roaming the streets, accosting every fletcher, leather apron and anyone trading with a knife. Warren is poised to retire, people are afraid. What you have accomplished cannot be understated. We have large plans for this city and our vision of social reform has been led by you… you should be proud. But the increased enthusiasm for your work threatens to undermine those plans. You are upsetting the status quo, for want of a better word.
— David McCaffrey, In Extremis: A Hellbound Novella
He wanted to know something about me. I leaned over and put my mouth to his ear. It was barely a whisper.'I'm a murderer.
— Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea
A lot of people are alive because I shed too much hair to get away with murder.
— Darynda Jones, The Dirt on Ninth Grave
Your soul is drenched black with the blood of your victims, my dear, and that is why you can't see it. When you die, that heavy blood filled essence will sink to the bottom of the earth where you will burn in eternity for your crimes.
— Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study
Already, I'm starting to forget the face of the man I killed.
— Marie Lu, The Rose Society
But the pistol, this Walther...it was as if it had been made for the express purpose of shooting people. With a chill Richie realized that was why it had been made. What else could you do with a pistol? Use it to light your cigarettes?
— Stephen King, It
Two men. I had just killed two men. A killing machine, I hadn't even hesitated. Fear and rage settled deep in my chest, forming a layer of ice around my heart.
— Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study
I have joined an ancient fraternity. I have killed a man.
— Hubert Selby Jr., Waiting Period
When you’re a professional athlete, you get paid millions of dollars for doing something that’s not only fun, but also physical and badass. You have fans: pathetic people without their own lives or hopes or dreams that measure their happiness on your weekly performance (this still boggles my mind, but in the best way possible—however, my role as a fan now is quite detached). You get to travel around to different cities and fuck their most beautiful women. You are given license to do pretty much whatever you want all the time, and are forgiven easily and often instantly when caught doing anything illegal. Professional athletes can literally get away with murder.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.Put out the light, and then put out the light:If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,I can again thy former light restore,Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,I know not where is that Promethean heatThat can thy light relume.
— William Shakespeare, Othello
I whispered across the bars to Jackaby as I rose, "Shall I tell them the truth?""Have you killed anyone?" he asked, quietly."No, of course not!""Then I can't imagine why you shouldn't.
— William Ritter, Jackaby
Sometimes I feel like God…when I order someone killed – they die the same day.
— Pablo Escobar
It's a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.
— Donna Tartt
[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affect our lives.
— Agatha Christie
He was distracted by a brief surge of adrenaline as he remembered the girl’s blood-soaked body. Flesh separated and puckered, he had left her in such a manner that her sacrification would be remembered.The recollection aroused him. Death and sensuality combined to create a unique vision of purity and abhorrence. Though he had experienced doubts since beginning, he knew the mission he had been tasked with was necessary. It had given him a purity of purpose. These women needed to be punished, all in her name. And yet he felt guilt. Not enough to consume him, but enough to have it niggling away in the back of his mind like a parasite infecting his very soul.May God forgive me for the deeds I committed on Kelly, no heart no heart.
— David McCaffrey, In Extremis: A Hellbound Novella
I couldn't help thinking how well Cain had prospered after killing his brother: he founded the first city--and, although we don't like to talk about it all that much, we are all his children.
— Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
A murder was never about brawn, it began and ended in the brain and the brain could justify anything.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred...If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?
— Mother Teresa
People more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.
— Agatha Christie
I am going to be murdered.It wasn’t any easier to face in the daytime.
— Kendall Kulper, Salt & Storm
He pauses then, studying me. “How would you have done it?”His question surprises me. “You mean how would I have killed you?”“Yes. Do you have a favorite method for such things?”Since he knows I am an assassin, there is no need to be coy. “I prefer a garrote. I like the intimacy it allows me when I whisper reminders of vengeance in their ears as they die. But in your case, I had sharpened my favorite knife especially for the occasion.”His brows quirk up. “Why no garrote for me?”I look pointedly at his thick neck, bulging with muscle and sinew. “I do not have one big enough,” I mutter.
— Robin LaFevers
He wanted to cut the man’s throat. Never in his life had he been so overpowered by such a desire to kill someone. It was a strange feeling, sweet and driven. In one leap he could be on him. His legs wanted to do it; they trembled with anticipation.
— Robert Karjel, The Swede
From anonymous bullying to anonymous murder for hire, the Internet had something for every sick taste.
— Kenneth Eade, Killer.com
With the amount of diazepam in me, I should have been content to lie back and let events unfold as they may, and my curiosity did for a moment consider it, but then a punch of panic reminded me that people far saner than I were murdered for less in more conspicuous locations.
— Tanya Thompson, Assuming Names: A Con Artist's Masquerade
To kill deliberately is very wrong,” said Chen Gong. “I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me,” was Cao Cao’s reply. Chen Gong could say nothing.
— Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Vol. 1
It is the manner of death that reveals the importance of a man. Ordinary people are murdered while extraordinary people are assassinated.
— Ashwin Sanghi
If a tattoo is supposed to make a statement, that kid’s body is just plain babbling.
— Vincent H. O'Neil, Crime Capsules: Tales of Death, Desire, and Deception
an odious crime, as old as the Bible and for an utterly despicable motive too and carried out in a cowardly manner, making use of intermediaries.
— Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos
Have you taught her to kill, Priest? Can you teach her such a thing? She's so wise in her innocence, so innocent in her wisdom.
— Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood
Our purpose is to find out whether innocence, the moment it becomes involved in an action, can avoid committing murder.
— Albert Camus
It was easy to imagine the beginning of time here, but also, perhaps, its end.
— Chris Womersley, Bereft
No one outside could imagine what it felt like to squeeze the life out of a man, to feel the jerking and juddering as you throttled away their last breath. Sometimes Jared found himself staring at his own hands, marveling at what they’d done, disgusted at their violence but proud of their ability to protect.
— Holly Stone, THROTTLE
What had he done? Something horrible, something terrible, but something he'd done as a child. Can you commit murder in innocence? It's too big a thing for the human mind to take in, that's the problem. And it grew with the ever-larger newspaper pictures of a girl who was near enough an angel, even before she died. Only the young die good. And Angela Milton died young enough to be perfect.
— Jonathan Trigell
The carriage could only clop along at about ten miles per hour, which only accentuated Imogene’s excitement. She urged it onward: "Fly, horse, fly!
— Hunter Murphy, Imogene in New Orleans
They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge," Shrake said. "If it wasn't murder, it was a really weird accident.
— John Sandford, Storm Prey
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
— Elie Wiesel, Night
There's always someone's father, someone's mother, someone's wife, someone's son. This is the problem with killing and eating people. One of the problems.
— Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf
Death doesn’t have to be the end of it. Our love for her is stronger than the grave.
— James W. Bodden, The Red Light Princess
His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing Camille; in his moments of calm, when the spectre was not present, he would have committed the murder over again had he thought his interests required it.
— Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin
And if the characters haven't died, they carry on murdering to this very day ...
— Rebekka Kricheldorf
Though she had been surprised to find that murder was so thoroughly enjoyable, Mrs Bennet did not believe that this reflected any fault or wickedness in her character. She knew she only committed these acts tosecure the future well-being of her daughters. Naturally, she would be able to stop killing once her daughters had husbands and there was no further use for such bloodthirsty deeds. Indeed, she felt adamant that she only enjoyed the planning and execution of such matters because her daughters had not been so good as to provide her with wedding preparations to occupy her active mind.
— Debbie Cowens, Murder & Matchmaking
They camped that night on the foreplain at the foot of a talus slope and the murder that had been reckoned upon took place.
— Cormac McCarthy
In East Orange, initiations were completed by murdering someone, for no other reason than to prove to a tremendously cold, tremendously tight brotherhood that you possessed the hardness required to watch their backs.
— Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Instead of falling to the ground like a heavy doll, as Kermin had seen the prisoners do at the Chetnik executions, his mother shrank into herself, a reverse blossoming, coming to rest in a sitting position, like a ruminative Buddha
— Reif Larsen
Seriously,” the banker went on, “what do you investigate? I have a feeling you do more than find stray kittens and bring home lost babies.”“Murder.
— Chris Bohjalian, The Light in the Ruins
We do not believe in murder! We believe in convenience in our careers, in our cuisine, in our kills, and in our definitions.
— Danielle Valenilla, Fun Dip & Other Misfortunes
And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?""That would be a very good question," said Miss Marple. "I have not yet had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a theory as to that."Mr. Rafter's smile broadened."Conversations with you might be dangerous," he said."Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide," said Miss Marple.
— Agatha Christie
In the age of ideologies, we must make up our minds about murder. If murder has rational foundations, then our period and we ourselves have significance. If it has no such foundations, then we are plunged into madness there is no way out except to find some significance or to desist.
— Albert Camus, The Fastidious Assassins
War is organized murder and nothing else
— Harry Patch
Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he had accepted; a world in which murder was easier than hope.
— Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
Smoke rose from the barrel of the gun like a serpent crawling up from its wicker basket
— Andrew Lennon, Family Man - A Short Story of Murder
I'd imagine "murderess" trumps "wife" when defining a close relationship.
— Robert Galbraith
They try to thrive. To multiply. To make murder a method of management.
— William H. Gass
You will take his life but you can't take his memory out of us.
— Auliq Ice
Murder is murder,as much a curse to the slayer as to the slain, and cannot be a matter of indifference, whoever the dead may be.
— Ellis Peters
I remember having an argument with Alan, I said the Queen's not just going to call the guy up and send him out to do it. And Alan says, well, how would a monarch give orders to her assassin.
— Eddie Campbell
It's a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”“Well, of course, I do too,” said Henry matter-of-factly. “But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.”Francis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. “No,” he said. “Not that bad.
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
If you wanted to kill me, why haven't you smothered me in my sleep?" "No sport in that." She gestured towards the ceiling. "Can I expect to be strung up on that bar and gutted like a deer?" He looked up at the bar and frowned. "Too much sport. Lots of heave-hoeing. Big mess to clean up after. Instead, why don't you just drink the poison-laced whiskey?" He extended the glass toward her again and when she didn't move he said, "No? Okay then." He shot the drink. She might not want the edge taken off but he sure as hell did.
— Sandra Brown, Mean Streak
Every human life has infinite value and to destroy even one is a crime against all humanity.
— Marty Rubin
No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.
— Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk
I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim-it is the picture of a girl watching her lover dies.
— Agatha Christie
Ashes, ashes.” Her whispered words of an old rhyme smashed through the silence as thunder, and in unison, the shadow figures answered.“We all fall down.
— A.F. Stewart, Killers and Demons II: They Return
...a murder of crows gormandized until they were satiated.
— Rex Curry
Born from different parents, they were siblings in death, destroyed by the same hand.
— Clive Barker, Cabal
The man cocked his gun and Patty had time for one last thought: I wish, I wish, I wish I could take this back.
— Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
That’s quite the specific search...'Sadistic Old-Bag-Murdering Witches'—I can’t even begin to imagine what that involves.
— Stacey T. Hunt, Trick
This education we're giving them is the tool of destruction, of course; that's what makes it so painful. We're showing them how to accomplish the ritual murder of ourselves.
— Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People is Wrong
My mother's mother came to this country in the usual way--she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn't one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money in one sock and a knife in the other, coming to the new world with an old world motive--to murder the man that had left her for America.
— Andrew Cotto, Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery
What kind of dark, twisted mind preys on young women? I think it was Poe that said the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical thing in the universe, and if that was true… I was John Milton.
— Bruce Crown, Forlorn Passions
Maria, it sounds like he was insane. Rational people don't intentionally addict people. I feel sorry for those poor people who were unsuspecting victims.
— Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.
— Lloyd DeMause, The Emotional Life of Nations
Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life, only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.
— Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Taking a life, is not worth getting life in prison.
— Anthony Liccione
No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.
— Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
He should have caught up with me inside of fifteen minutes at the outside, if he'd been able to get on the next train after mine. But then there was that station agent to be considered. And Rafe didn't have a solitary coin on him; he'd have to break one of those fifties. I now remembered something that I'd been noticing half my life and that had never meant anything to me until today - a little sign outside each subway change booth, advising the public that the agent wasn't obliged to make change for anything bigger than $1. Never get mixed up in a murder, flashed through my mind insanely, unless you've got plenty of small change.("Don't Wait Up For Me, Tonight")
— Cornell Woolrich, Violence
The nights were advantageous, too. After they kissed their families goodnight, it was expected that they would share a bed, their bodies close, their movements obscured under the covers.
— Alexis Coe, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis
In the mind of the public, she seemed endowed with an almost supernatural power to commit heinous acts, now matter the time or place.
— Alexis Coe, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis
If Alice had a post-engagement policy, it was to pass.
— Alexis Coe, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis
In the distance, steel-blue mountains loomed heavy on the horizon, their shoulders burdened with the same accursed snow the gods were currently depositing upon the lowlands. Between us and the mountains, the vast expanse of one of the innumerable caravan sites littering the Welsh shores was dimly visible, and at the far edges of the sands, grey waves tipped a mulch of brown foam up on to the beach, a sudden deposition of wishy-washy creatures that seemed to spider-leg over each other in their haste to reach the shore and see what all the fuss was about.But even these creatures comprised of sea-foam were freaked out by the death-stare, for the little critters swiftly dissipated under the force of a skeletal glower.A skull lay in the sand, its empty sockets staring down the beach at the retreating surge. Their fear wouldn’t last long. Soon they’d realise the skeleton had not engaged in pursuit, their confidence would grow, and they’d encroach, further and further up the bank. Eventually, they’d be close enough to see it was completely inert, and would overrun our position, victoriously sweeping up their fallen foe and dragging it back out with them into the dreary waves.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
He'd searched every corner of his mind looking for ways to avoid a rendezvous with Chico. In the last twenty years, Slade had come a long way from the ghetto orphanage where he'd grown up, but the only way he could help Maria was to get in touch with Chico. Slade remembered the last time he'd seen Chico as though it was yesterday.
— Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, The True Story of Murder in a Small Town, begins on a steamy August night with two teenagers, brother and sister, on an evil mission deep in a rural Michigan forest. For one desperate moment headlights appear on the lonely access road. Will they be found out? Thus the story of one of state’s strangest criminal cases unfolds. Girl breaks up with boyfriend. He turns violent. She disappears without a trace. Then state police investigators set out on what at first looks like a fool’s journey. The story is colored by a bizarre Ouija board death prophesy and the roles of two psychics, a former practicing witch and a handsome young artist who is suspected of Satanism. The canny and elusive suspect taunts police and seems always to be one step ahead of them. When a key witness is daunted by uncharacteristic injuries, a mysterious medium tells him he is the victim of black magic practiced by the suspect’s grandmother. And when, after eight years, the suspect finally is brought to trial, he is represented by a Roman Catholic priest.
— Richard W Carson
I imagined her poised, a humerus in one hand, a toothbrush in the other, as she gently brushed away the last remnants of the person who had once used that arm to shake hands, open doors, lift a mug of tea. I wondered if it was so very different from how I myself looked when I sat on the floor of my finds room, perhaps sitting cross-legged, at the centre of a circle of newly cleaned bones, a tibia in one hand, a toothbrush in the other …
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things." Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
— D.E. Ireland
Kusanagi had met plenty of good, admirable people who’d been turned into murderers by circumstance. There was something about them he always seemed to sense, an aura that they shared. Somehow, their transgression freed them from the confines of a mortal existence, allowing them to perceive the great truths of the universe. At the same time, it meant they had one foot in forbidden territory. They straddled the line between sanity and madness.
— Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X
From all these friends, I could not escape learning some of the statistics that I preferred not to know. Forty-one people at the mall had been wounded. Nineteen had died. Everyone said it was a miracle that only nineteen perished. What has gone wrong with our world when nineteen dead can seem like any kind of miracle?
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not diehe does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgracenor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his facenor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty spaceHe does not sit with silent men who watch him night and dayWho watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to prayWho watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
Drug addicts had their drugs. Alcoholics had their bottles. Serial killers had their murders.
— Jess C. Scott, Playmates
Don't make me cover your face with a pillow until you see my side of things.""Isn't that called murder?
— G.A. Aiken
You know, when the list of people who have a really good reason to want you dead covers more than two sheets of paper, you might want to start rethinking your life choices.
— Rebecca Wolf-Nail, Murder at the Arabian Nights: A Belly Dance Mystery
Don’t go,” said Cedric. “Murder has made you practically one of the family.
— Agatha Christie, 4:50 from Paddington
When you kill someone, something from that person passes to you - a sigh, a smell or a gesture. I call it "the curse of the victim." It clings to your body and seeps into your skin, going all the way into your heart, and thus continues to live within you. I carry with me the traces of all the men I have killed. I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces, feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy. In every murderer breathes the man he murdered.
— Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
For what seemed a long time Mat knelt there with his father's dead wrist in his hand, while his mind arrived and arrived and yet arrived at that place and time and that body lying still on the soiled and bloodied stones.
— Wendell Berry, Fidelity
You are going to die in front of dozens of witnesses, and none of them will do a thing to help you or avenge you. Because they know exactly what you know: The world is ending.
— Charlie Huston, Sleepless
She fantasized sometimes too about killing him a little: a little poison in his pudding, a little flick-flick-flick with a fillet knife at his throat.
— Shannon Celebi, Small Town Demons
Frank Olson had joined the Special Operations Division of the Army's Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick at its inception in 1950. He was issued a Q clearance, the civilian equivalent of the military's top secret clearance, and worked with the CIA on MK-ULTRA.As part of that work, he traveled in 1953 to Britain, France and West Germany. At the secret British military research center at Porton Down, the sons say, Olson witnessed "extreme interrogations" in which "the CIA committed murder" using biological agents Olson had developed.They say a psychiatrist there, William Sargent, grew concerned that Olson "had serious misgivings related to those murders and might therefore pose a security risk," and so recommended to his superiors that Olson no longer be granted access to classified research facilities in Britain.source: Six decades later, sons seek answers on death of Detrick scientistThe Baltimore Sun, 8 December 2012
— Matthew Hay Brown
It has often been said that the more unusual the murder the easier it is to solve, but this is a theory I don't believe. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple, and you should think of your investigations as a complicated experiment: look at what remains constant and look at what changes, ask the right questions and don't be afraid of wrong answers, and above all rely on observation and rely on experience.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Generally he knew by instinct the likely length of an investigation, but on this occasion he did not: as he fought to get his breath he suddenly saw himself as others must see him, and he was struck by the impossibility of his task. The event of the boy's death was not simple because it was not unique and if he traced it backwards, running the time slowly in the opposite direction (but did it have a direction?), it became no clearer. The chain of causality might extend as far back as the boy's birth, in a particular place and on a particular date, or even further into the darkness beyond that. And what of the murderer, for what sequence of events had drawn him to wander by this old church? All these events were random and yet connected, part of a pattern so large that it remained inexplicable. He might, then, have to invent a past from the evidence available - and, in that case, would not the future also be an invention? It was as if he were staring at one of those puzzle drawings in which foreground and background create entirely different images: you could not look at such a thing for long.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Hawksmoor had often noticed how, in the moments when he first carne upon a corpse, all the objects around it wavered for an instant and became unreal- the trees which rose above a body hidden in woodland, the movement of the river which had washed a body onto its banks, the cars or hedges in a suburban street where a murderer had left a victim, all of these things seemed at such times to be suddenly drained of meaning like an hallucination.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
As Confucius says, under some circumstances murder can be forgiven; but unreasonableness never is.
— John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure
Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers.
— Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
... Play the age as comedy if you want to get away with murder.
— James Agee, Agee on Film, Vol. 1: Essays and Reviews
I'm waiting for the piece of shit to crawl out from under his rock. If it is who she said it is, then I'll be there to kick the throne from beneath his filthy, lying, murdering backside.” - Nik Driver
— A.Z.Green
Must have a lot of male customers to let her dress like that. Nice view.
— Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
Those we murder with our mouths often live longest
— Anonymous, Njal's Saga
...But this number, like all the others, must be seen not as 5.7 million, which is an abstraction few of us can grasp, but as 5.7 million times one. This does not mean some generic image of a Jew passing through some abstract notion of death 5.7 million times. It means countless individuals who nevertheless have to be counted, in the middle of life...
— Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
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, The Age of Reason
Time was the greatest murderer in history.
— Cameron Jace, Once Beauty Twice Beast
Where there is murder, anything can happen.
— Agatha Christie, Third Girl
It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.
— George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder
On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.
— Albert Camus, The Plague
Great men are allowed to spill the blood of others.
— Naoyuki Ochiai, Syndrome 1866 Vol. 1
Murder and a glass of wine: priceless
— Casey Quinn, NUMB
The dog leash was still tied tight around the oak tree in the back, stretched worn and limp across the green grass as if trying to escape to freedom; and he buried his wife without a tombstone. Where before, she sat most times in his home, licking her wounds.
— Anthony Liccione
Ask them, then. ...Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them, when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it.
— James Grady, Six Days of the Condor
If I could quietly kill her without anyone knowing, I would.
— Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
Some peopleAre worthy of a bullet straightto the heart because that is wherecruelty evolves into evil.Somehumans aren't human at all,despite how they appear.Humanity is what lives insidepeople,harbored beneath skin, flesh,and bone.
— Ellen Hopkins, Smoke
You're murderers," she told the stunned crowd. "You killed him. He was a miracle, and you killed him. Now you've just got me. And I'm a curse.
— J.L. Bryan, Jenny Pox
Lorcan rubbed his head. “Am I asking too much to want the little bitch dead? Am I?” It seemed Hefaidd-Hen learned long ago not to answer certain questions. “All I want is for her to suffer a painful, horrifying death. And for her head to be on a spike in front of my castle. That’s all I want.
— G.A. Aiken, Dragon Actually
He remembered a conversation he'd once had with a Chief Constable some years back, when he asked the Chief if in his experience he believed there was such a thing as the 'perfect murder'. The Chief had replied that there was. 'It's the one we never hear about,' he said.
— Peter James, Not Dead Yet
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, Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral
We might be a bit slow on some things down in the South, but we know murder.
— Cynthia Eden, Die For Me
I guess whoever built and buried that IED out there in the desert will never know how far that blast traveled. But all things ripple out, cause shrapnel.
— Lucy Christopher, The Killing Woods
How can a school prepare you for murderers and mad-men?' Taro asked. 'Friends who would betray you to your death. People in authority who use their power to perform the most unnatural acts. People hating you because you can't do things you aren't supposed to be doing anyway. That's a lot to expect of a school.
— Moira J. Moore, Heroes at Risk