c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.
— Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
If I had known things would turn out this way, I would have trained harder. I would have learned to take care of myself. But I guess that's the point, isn't it? You never know what you're going to have to face, so you'd better be prepared.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
Because those four days in the mountains, they changed us. I gave you a piece of me. And you must have given me a piece of yourself, too, because you wouldn't have come here otherwise. You would have let go. I can't let go of you, Britt. And I don't want you to let go of me.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
I am a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a pita. Why the pita? That counts as another mystery.
— Demetri Martin
I don't know anything!' Tim(Caleb) wailed.He'd never spoken a truer word in his life.
— Anthony Horowitz, Three of Diamonds
Consider this a fair warning.
— Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire
You gonna take the case?"It's not a case. It's a missing person. Sort of."You're gonna have a devil of a time finding him if it was aliens," Grandma said.
— Janet Evanovich, High Five
Mom always taught me not to use the word hate. As if it were profanity.
— Tedd Arnold, Rat Life
Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the darkness lift at the touch of her fingertips against his lips. But it shivers, and light bleeds in among the cracks.
— Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Nothing but trees.
— Robert Liparulo, House of Dark Shadows
He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him.
— Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
Just calm down and think, sir. Think. Where is your wife?
— Stefania Mattana, Into the Killer Sphere
In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant. And even if it is not significant, it has the potential to be so - which amounts to the same thing. The world of the book comes to life, seething with possibilities, with secrets and contradictions. Since everything seen or said, even the slightest, most trivial thing, can bear a connection to the outcome of the story, nothing must be overlooked. Everything becomes essence; the center of the book shifts with each event that propels it forward. The center, then, is everywhere, and no circumference can be drawn until the book has come to its end.
— Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
Chase rushed after her in pursuit. The woman lost one of her high-heeled shoes and Chase took advantage of her lack of balance to tackle her. They crashed to the ground.“Why are you running from the ball, Cinderella?” he asked.
— Stefania Mattana, Into the Killer Sphere
Chase stooped to inspect it. Angelo handed him a latex glove, which took Chase three attempts to pull on before tearing it. He had never had a good relationship with latex. He tried two more, tearing each one of those too.
— Stefania Mattana, Into the Killer Sphere
In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.
— Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway on Writing
She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Bess stepped back and looked at Nancy admiringly. 'Your hunches are so often right it startles me.
— Carolyn Keene, The Whispering Statue
The trick to being smart is knowing when to play dumb.
— V. Alexander
Abandoned.The word alone sends shudders down a sensitive spine, troubling the thoughts of pained souls as their hurt swells in ripples. It is a sentence of undesired solitude often pronounced on the innocent, the trusting—administered without warning or satisfactory cause. One day the moon is yours, or so you believe. The next, his countenance transforms from Jekyll to Hyde with no intention of ever turning back, and you are left trampled upon in a deserted street, concealed by dirty fog that squelches all illumination or any hope for future rays of light. It is the worst of mysteries why a beast considered noble would forsake his duty, exhibiting a heart of stone. And all who once looked on him, now turn down their eyes and suffer, beguiled. Some poisons have no antidote, but are slow, silent, torturous ends that curl up the broken body swept into a cold, dark corner. There she is left to drown in her tears—a dying heart.Abandoned.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
I am the prince of procrastination. It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after
— Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance
Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world?
— Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
I like having you around, Britt. That's the truth. I'm not leaving you. Even if you were a pain in the butt, I'd stay with you. It's the right thing to do. But it turns out I find you likable and interesting, and while I'm not glad you have to go through this, I'm glad we have each other.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Black Ice
One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.
— Robertson Davies
I just know that any time I undertake a case, I'm apt to run into some kind of a trap.
— Carolyn Keene, The Clue of the Broken Locket
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, Heinous Crimes, Immoral Minds
Always just a brainstorm away from our next disaster...
— Birgit Pratcher, June Bear Adventures: The Missing Pies
No sheep may leave the flock," he said to anyone who would listen, "unless he comes back again.
— Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
Days, weeks, months, years," said the boy. "Minutes and hours and seconds. I don't know about any of those things.
— Tim Bowler, Frozen Fire
Good fences make good neighbors, and these were apparently good enough that they had not felt the need for razor wire at the top. I crested the fence, threw myself into the yard beyond, fell, rolled to my feet, and ran with the expectation of being garroted by a taut clothesline.I heard panting, looked down, and saw a gold retriever running at my side, ears flapping. The dog glanced up at me tongue rolling, grinning, as though jazzed by the prospect of an unscheduled play session.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Hours
Oh, do you understand what I mean? Have you ever felt that about the Moon? Have you ever ached with the sheer beauty of it?
— James Lusarde, Naked on the Moon
I rested my head on the wall behind me and closed my eyes, wishing my life had a button: Ignore All.
— Rachel Brady, Final Approach
Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.
— Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
Praise makes me humble, but when I am abused, I know that I have touched the stars.
— Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder: A Mystery
I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we'd use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertips tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings.
— Ed Lynskey, Lake Charles
Here lies the body of Colonel Cornell’s. The rest of the fellow, I fancy, in hell is.
— Mark Hodder, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.
— Ruth Rendell, One Across, Two Down
For surely as each November has its April, mysteries only are significant; and one mystery-of-mysteries creates them all: nothing false and possible is love(who's imagined,therefore limitless)love's to giving as to keeping's give;as yes is to if,love is to yes
— E.E. Cummings, I : Six Nonlectures
I play to win and if it looks like I've lost, its only because its not over yet.
— Kiera Dellacroix, Engravings of Wraith
Again time elapsed.
— Carolyn Keene, The Secret of the Old Clock
Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines. Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper. ~ Sherlock Holmes
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.
— Arnaldur Indriðason, Silence of the Grave
She always has close calls when she solves a mystery!
— Carolyn Keene, Mystery of the Ivory Charm
All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.
— Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation
The longer one lives, the more mysterious life seems.
— Francis Brett Young, Cold Harbour
In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius.
— Graham Moore, The Sherlockian
Why didn't they ask the Evans?
— Agatha Christie, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
It all depends on the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. - Daupin
— Edgar Allan Poe
She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.
— Jeffery Deaver, Roadside Crosses
I leveled the gun and fired until it was empty.
— Rachel Brady
Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to carry on that counts.Winston Churchill
— H.A. Corby
I just completed The Tenth Circle. It is an excellent mystery story surrounding a family with modern day issues.
— Jodi Picoult
My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.
— Donald E. Westlake
You can never be free of their criticism until you no longer seek their praise.
— Dennis Ruane
We are all bodies of water, guarding the mystery of our depths, but some of us have more to guard than others.
— Deborah Smith, Alice at Heart
I didn't know that once you've proven yourself useful to the wrong people, you'll never be free again.
— Steve Hamilton, The Lock Artist
Nice dress,” Victoria said.“Thank you,” Perpetua said. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”Victoria blinked. “Uh, what?
— Benjamin R.  Smith, Atlas
Every mystery novel I ever read, the great detective was such an arrogant fuck you could replace 70% of his dialogue with 'Are you stupid?' and the conversation would still make sense.
— NisiOisiN, Zaregoto 1: Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle
But maybe she should turn the other way while I get dressed. Wouldn't want to ruin her for other men. - Dean
— Jeff Mariotte, Witch's Canyon
I wish you couldn't figure me out, but you'd always want to know what I was about
— Kate Nash
And you who seek to know me,know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not,unless you know the Mystery:For if that which you seek,you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.
— Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess: The Mother of Modern Witchcraft
There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash.
— Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness
I needed a new mystery.
— John Fowles, The Magus
I am who I am and always shall be.
— Laura Elizabeth, Farmer
Doomed to Hell. Every last one of you.
— June Ahern, The Skye in June
Be careful what you say...you might end up in my next book!
— Michele Lynn Seigfried, Red Tape
My life is my book, but I can't read it.
— Marty Rubin
This is the day the Lord has made, suck it up and rejoice.
— Donna White Glaser, The Enemy We Know
You are not who you think you are.
— Silvia Hartmann
Quoth the Raven," said a glitching voice from the phone. "Nevermore," said the man. "Then the game has started
— Rao Umar Javed, A Painter, A Performer, A Poet and A Madman
You can't jump for the stars if your feet hurt. And when you get where you're going, you darn well better look great!
— Dan Brown, Digital Fortress
It's weird when you wake of from a bad dream and everything is still bad.
— Todd Strasser, Blood on My Hands
You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal. --Sherlock Holmes
— Arthur Conan Doyle
A farmer, as one of his farmer correspondents once wrote to Liberty Hyde Bailey, is "a dispenser of the 'Mysteries of God.'"The husband, unlike the "manager" or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the complexity and the mystery that is to be husbanded, and so the husbanding mind is both careful and humble.
— Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food
On the Writing Process:"When in doubt, take it out.,
— Barbara DaCosta, Resort to Murder
There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.
— Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom
My name is Markowski. I carry a badge. Also a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.I was never a Boy Scout but "Be Prepared" is still a good motto to live by. Especially if you plan to keep living.
— Justin Gustainis, Hard Spell
Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.
— Anna Godbersen, Rumors
As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera.
— Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Either you're going to shoot us or you're not. The ball always lands on red or black, never both.
— V. Alexander
The good characters in my book are loosely based on folks I know. All the bad stuff is made up.
— Mike Bove, Willowtree A Bruce DelReno Mystery
She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die.
— Jacob Appel, Radiazione
What’s the hurry? From my experience, dead bodies don’t get any deader.
— David Harry, The Padre Puzzle
Tonight I’ve been dealing with a known killer, a male whore, a scam artist and now I’ve graduated to talking to a mayor. Who’s next? The President of the National Association of Rodents?
— V. Alexander
Is this Jimmy Redstone?” the male voice at the other end of the line inquired. I couldn’t identify the voice. I didn’t recognize the number and the used car salesman tone didn’t do anything to reduce my annoyance at being interrupted during breakfast. “Who the hell you think would be answering his phone?” I snarled.
— David Harry, The Padre Predator
There are two rules for sucess:1. Never tell everything you know.
— Roger H. Lincoln
Time is a terrible thing because it can erase both joys and pains.
— Gosho Aoyama
She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamored, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realized that there was, after all, something godlike about him. He could control a horse.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase
To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed, The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Oh how I've missed you, Holmes.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
People are mysterious, even to themselves.
— Frank Lentricchia, The Sadness of Antonioni
The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.Michel de Montaigne
— Laurie Stevens, The Dark Before Dawn
Alan Campbell opened one eye.From somewhere in remote distances, muffled beyond sight or sound, his soul crawled back painfully, through subterranean corridors, up into his body again. Toward the last it moved to a cacophony of hammers and lights. Then he was awake.The first eye was bad enough. But, when he opened his second eye, such as rush of anguish flowed through his brain that he hastily closed them again.
— John Dickson Carr, The Case of the Constant Suicides
Mrs. Murdo, walkind even more briskly to keep her spirits up, was crossing Harken Square when something fell to the pavement just in front of her with a terrific thump. How extraordinary, she thought, bending to pick it up. It was sort of a bundle. She began to untie it.
— Jeanne DuPrau
How shall I typify what happened? Passion play? Somewhat. Weird tale? Indubitably. Horror story? Pretty close. Grotesque melodrama? Certainly. Black comedy? Your point of view will determine that. Perhaps it was a combination of them all... So, to the story. A chronicle of greed and cruelty, horror and rapacity, sadism and murder. Love, American style.
— Richard Matheson, Now You See It . . .
The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring.
— Meister Eckhart
The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.
— Maureen Dowd
I'm sixty-nine years old, and I have no plans to run for reelection. Do you think I give a damn?
— John Hart, The King of Lies
...heaven wouldn’t be like this earth, this tormented earth ruled by evil forces that tossed humanity to and fro like a slow clown in a two-bit rodeo.
— Joe LaFlam, My Fear Lady
A fallow mind is a field of discontent.
— John H. Cunningham, Red Right Return
As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.
— Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders
Walking on a path of uncertainties, Shuffling on the probabilities of uncertainties, Waging on the possibilities of uncertainties, Waiting for the occurrences of uncertainties,Solving the mysteries of wandering uncertainties,We move, lead and live.
— Pushpa Rana, Just the Way I Feel
Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream.Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks.There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers.There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart.There is mystery unfolding.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Mysteries are facts that haven't been formalized.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn't a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story, there'd have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?
those who truly know, knows those who don't, will learn if they ask
— Rose Blue, Bay Minette
I remember the fire, it burns bright, always around me. I close my eyes, and tears stream out. The tides of the past seize me, bear me out to sea.
— Ned Hayes, Sinful Folk
We—all of us—want to feel special. We want to feel the glory that shines on us when we reach beyond our boundaries to grab at something greater, to live a heroic life, if only for a day or a week or a moment. This simple yearning is in us all, hardly recognizable, often only the merest hint that there is something more to us. This is why we seek out new places...we want to remember a somewhere that gave us the space to expand ourselves, to become a little more of who we truly are.
— J.E. Leigh, See Before You Die: Costa Rica
Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. 'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?
Any closer would unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful...It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her... No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination... No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable
— Ben Elton, Blind Faith
I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira that night when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named Jose, had just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. A piece of real quiet. Jose's cheeks bristled because he didn't shave very often, and his apron was dingy because it didn't get washed very often, and his fingernails had little crescents of grime under them. The glass he poured for me wasn't all that clean. But the stuff he poured was golden-amber and beautiful, like distilled sunlight, and it made the whole place soothing as sleep—which drunks know how to value because they don't get much of it.
— Stephen R. Donaldson, The Man Who Killed His Brother
In an English village, you turn over a stone and have no idea what will crawl out.Miss Marple
— Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced
I could go crazy on a night like tonightWhen summer's beginning to give up her fightAnd every thought's a possiblilityAnd the voices are heard but nothing is seenWhy do you spend this time with meMaybe an equal mystery
— Emily Saliers
The man who came into the room did not look as though his name was, or could have ever been, Robinson. It might have been Demetrius, or Isaacstein, or Perenna - though not one or the other in particular. He was not definitely Jewish, nor definitely Greek nor Portugese nor Spanish, nor South American. What did seem highly unlikely was that he was an Englishman called Robinson.
— Agatha Christie
Already, Seattle is taking hold of her. She still holds Sedona in the dry tan of her skin and in her hair, but the fine mist of the Northwest is making its way to places she didn’t know were parched.
— Susan Wiggs, Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices
UFO is a joke when there ain't mystery in the sky.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works," he told Carter shortly after they met, "and that's the clockworks, that's what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down. That's inertia. No one knows how that works, but it does. It's that one percent mystery that's the way of our maker. Put everything together, energy and inertia, the explicable and the inexplicable, and that's how you and I make our living.
— Glen David Gold
That’s where they found the skeletons. Right where you’re standing.
— Teresa Flavin, The Blackhope Enigma
So what is love then is it dictated or chosen (handed down and made by hand)Does it sing like the hymns of a thousand yearsOr is it just pop emotion (handed down and made by hand)And if it ever was there and it leftDoes it mean it was never trueAnd to exist it must eludeIs that why I think these things of you?
— Emily Saliers
We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out.
— Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl
A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.”	“Very kind of you.”	“Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.”	Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. 	“Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.
— Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl
Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.
— Agatha Christie, Mrs. McGinty's Dead
Her killer wrote a note on that stationary.""A note." Now Renquist's eyebrows lifted. "Well. That was rather arrogant of him, wasn't it?
— J.D. Robb
In fact-Dr. Sheppard!
— Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
You do think you know about everything," said her husband. I do," said Tuppence.
— Agatha Christie, Partners in Crime
Por que en las epocas oscurasse escribe con tinta invisible?Why in the darkest agesdo they write with invisible ink?
— Pablo Neruda
..it sounded very good and very false at the same time, so that you had the feeling that even if was true, he was touching only on the very highest points and maybe embellishing those a little.
— Bill Pronzini, The Vanished
Yes, the setting (Dartmoor) is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men.Sherlock Holmes
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
...where your mind goes...energy flows
— Penny Reilly, Silver's Threads, Book 1 Spinning Colours Darkly
Wicked eyes are not a good prospect for seminary boys. They want a gentle, soft sort of wife, not a wife who looks as though she may sprout wings and carry off the young children of the village. ~Maria "Smythe
— Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl
It was a slaughterhouse, the most horrific scene I have ever witnessed...
— Minette Walters
The moment that followed was one that would forever change the course of her life. She reflected on it later, and wondered how such a short matter of seconds could alter so permanently every part of her existence. Like an unstoppable line of dominoes, the moment was the flick that set everything into motion.
— Jennifer  Perry, Deja Vu- A Novella
Those who fail to understand mystery are doomed to crack it
— Dean Cavanagh
In March of that year, I saw a man named Paul Barkley shot to death. It happened late at night in the parking lot of a café in Santa Rosa called Galileo’s.
— Frederick Weisel
Trap is a four-letter word, and like so many four-letter words it can mean something entirely else.--Hugo Anstead
— Jennifer A. Girardin, The French De Ception
Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow - James Matthew Barrie
— John Charles Harman
I want to know the age. The sex. Most of all, the fingerprints. I'd like to identify who it is.  After he had agreed, and I had left the office, walking to calm myself, I thought: And who am I? Please tell me who I am and what I'm doing.
— Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta
Makana stared up at the stars and marvelled at how clear they were out here, so far from human habitation. It was remarkable, just how many there were. They felt comforting, despite his situation. They took him back to his life with Muna, the happiest time he could remember, when the world had been simple. Sitting out in the yard in the evenings, watching the sky revolve slowly around them. It seemed like another world.
— Parker Bilal, The Golden Scales
To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.
— Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady
There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.
— Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire
Oh Moon, sweet, sweet Moon, I want to be naked on you. I want to be like a flower growing on your surface, unique and mysterious, at home in the wonder of you, as if my naked body would be something growing out of your soil, something precious, a lovely gift on your landscape.
— James Lusarde, Naked on the Moon
The real reason we have faces," Margot Lassiter observes, "is to hold back what we're thinking from the world.
— Eli Gottlieb, The Face Thief
Norm was lean, his short, straight black hair parted on the side, his mustache trimmed like he’d never heard of Adolf Hitler.
— Jane Sunday, The Good Book Club
The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.
— Pope Benedict XVI
Love is the biggest mystery of the universe. But why try to solve it, when one simply view it for what it is and marvel at the wonders and strangeness it brings?
— Arnold Arre, After Eden
Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. "Have you seen Honey?" We've all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Colette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That's Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Colete Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French's cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assasination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to eachother. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen.
— Pontypool 2007
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
We were on Barrow Street now."Who is the man with the scar?" I said.She shot me a glance, and her face hardened. "You saw him?""How could I miss? He was the real center of attention. Didn't you go to the opening at all?""No" She said. "And just because you saw him doesn't mean he was there.
— Nicholas Christopher, Veronica
All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father’s home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in.
— Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl
The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, some manner of surviving nature's fury and our mundane daily needs.
— Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, On The Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness
The mosquitos are so big they eat you alive wear your shoes.
— Joe R. Landon
What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life
—  no one enters into the heart of the mystery.
Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.
— Rex Stout, The Silent Speaker
How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water... with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song... with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog's... with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!Ah! If we had other senses which would work other miracles for us, how many more things would we not discover around us!
— Guy de Maupassant, Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques
Murder was so trivial in the stories Harold loved. Dead bodies were plot points, puzzles to be reasoned out. They weren't brothers. Plot points didn't leave behind grieving sisters who couldn't find their shoes.
— Graham Moore, The Sherlockian
The love of money can do wicked things to one's soul.
— Jules Haigler, The Color of Red
The image of him shifted with the violent frenzy of leaves. He was there and he wasn’t, as the leaves whipped and the lightning fell away in a slow strobe effect across the expanse of sky. How he had gotten up there, I had no idea, but he had been there. Crouched in the tree in the middle of the courtyard, he watched me intently through the open window.
— Gwenn Wright, The Fate of Flannery Flynn
On Westminster Bridge, Arthur was struck by the brightness of the streetlamps running across like a formation of stars. They shone white against the black coats of the marching gentlefold and fuller than the moon against the fractal spires of Westminster. They were, Arthur quickly realized, the new electric lights, which the city government was installing, avenue by avenue, square by square, in place of the dirty gas lamps that had lit London's public spaces for a century. These new electric ones were brighter. They were cheaper. They required less maintenance. And they shone farther into the dime evening, exposing every crack in the pavement, every plump turtle sheel of stone underfoot. So long to the faint chiaroscuro of London, to the ladies and gentlemen in black-on-black relief. So long to the era of mist and carbonized Newcastle coal, to the stench of the Blackfriars foundry. Welcome to the cleasing glare of the twentieth century.
— Graham Moore, The Sherlockian
I'm afraid our sun is nothing like whatever defined.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Life is volatile.
— Robert J. Pajer, A Handful of Dust
...the long blue shadows of afternoon advanced before me like cheerful ghosts of last summer's growth, dancing past the withered flower borders and the stiff hedges to fall at the feet of a stone nymph, her cascade of water frozen in her urn.
— Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor
Drama is real life – with the dull parts left out.” Alfred Hitchcock
— Marja McGraw
If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there".
— Brian Bianco, Dressed for a Kill
I couldn’t very well make a special delivery to the door of the constabulary now could I? And he’d have made the perfect scapegoat. That aura of misery he wraps himself in. So Byronesque. He’s too immersed in his own guilt to ever suspect it in another.
— Ella J. Fraser, A Tricky Lie
They inched through dense, heart-stopping darkness. In the distance was what looked like a bright white door cut out of a black wall. Sunni tiptoed towards it, puzzled by its brilliance.
— Teresa Flavin, The Blackhope Enigma
She shoved her hands in the deep silk-lined pockets…where she felt the cold steel of a revolver.
— Sherry Morris, Hundred Dollar Bill
Only God is the Giver and Master of Creativity and imagination because they are gifts that can only come from Him Alone!
— Cheyenne Mitchell, The Covering
You may suppose that perhaps this Walter T. Wallace found his destiny in food and passed down to his progeny a legacy like that of the great Colonel Sanders. The folks here in Wallace County would love to be able to tell you this is so. But no, like their granddaddy, the Wallace men were thievin’ crooks, always with a scheme ready to separate the weak from their hard-earned money.
— Gwenn Wright, Midnight Beneath the Magnolia
From Chapter 1:The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I'd never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should've learned better.
— Ed Lynskey, Pelham Fell Here
He walked away. It was a shame really, but what could I do? He was the law; I broke the law, two things one should never combine.From WIP The Trinity Saints
— Leslie Dawn Nash
Those who pay their bills on time are soon forgotten. It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
— Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance
This is what the Problem means,” he went on. “This is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and ivy. We lose them twice over, Lucy. Death’s not the worst of it. We turn our faces away.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Empty Grave
I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden".
— Ruth Rendell
We have come from all the countries of the world and are going to Saintes-Maries de la Mer. Nomads of the enigma, we gather there each year after having carried our mystery through ordinary countryside and fluid towns. Since we become transformed by our wanderings we are despised by those who stand still and retain a memory of giant serpents and metallic green.
— Raymond Queneau
Lockwood didn’t speak until everything was quiet again. “I know you’re worrying about me, Luce,” he said. “But you really mustn’t. These things happen when you’re an agent. You’ve been snared by ghosts in the past, haven’t you? There was the one that made the bloody footprints, and the thing in the tunnels below the Aickmere Brothers store. But it’s fine, because I helped you then, and you’ve helped me now. We’re there to help each other. If we do that, we’ll get through.” Which was a lovely thing to say, and it made me feel a little warmer. I just had to hope it was true.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Empty Grave
Nice sweater Bob, does it come in mens?
— Doyle MacBrayne, The Apple
Listen to me," Audra said. "Listen good. You don't get to touch me anymore. Not ever. You don't own me, or my children. We are not your possessions. You never really loved our children, but I do. Now, I'm going to find Sean and Louise. You can either help me or get out of my way. Which is it?
— Haylen Beck, Here and Gone
The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had not yet taken form. Black and white, he said. Presence and absence.
— Kate Mosse, The Taxidermist's Daughter
Every woman wants a cowboy.
— B.J. Daniels, Rough Rider
How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was exciting; it was exhilarating, it was invigorating; to say nothing of electrifying and above all, satisfying.How could I tell the dear man that murder made me feel so gloriously alive?
— Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
But ghosts aren't white and bright. Ghosts are shadows of someone or something gone wrong.
— Paul Tremblay, Disappearance at Devil's Rock
TO EAT IS VERY IMPORTANT, AND VERY PLEASUREABLE THING, BUT IT CAN ALSO BE VERY FRIGHTENING
— CLAMP, xxxHolic, Vol. 14
I like paths that lead nowhere, that leave you wondering where you are.
— Marty Rubin
It is not for me to suspect but to detect.
— Anna Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case
Margaret took Patrick's hand in hers. "Now you two," she said, "isn't it time you gave me another grandchild? We can't have Sean growing up an only child, like Patrick."Patrick blushed and smiled as Margaret squeezed his knee. And Audra caught a glimpse of her function in the marriage, then. She shivered and counted the minutes until she could go home and retreat to the haze.
— Haylen Beck, Here and Gone
Oh, the mystery when two souls become one united in love and sealed by an amazing God can not be seen or understood by the word of love for it is only seen in the action of love from above kissed with a hope and dressed in faith embraced by what can not be seen
— John M Sheehan
Any weapon's only as good as the man using it, and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything.
— Peter Benchley, The Deep
Mystery is a genius teacher: It forces its students to think thoroughly and to ask many questions! The path of mystery gives you much more things than the path of known!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Mostly I'd like to be taller. If I could be a couple inches taller, just have them stretch me out, my ass would be smaller.Peabody from Secrets in Death
— J D ROBB
The same as a cigarette?" asked Rita excitedly, as Mrs. Sin bent over her."The same, but very, very gentle.
— Sax Rohmer, Dope
…It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself. He doubted whether he would ever again believe them important to other people.
— P.D. James
Before he turned again the to the car his eye was caught by a small clump of unknown flowers. The pale pinkish white heads rose from a mossy pad on top of the wall and trembled delicately in the light breeze. Dalgliesh walked over and stood stock still, regarding in silence their unpretentious beauty. He smelt for the first time the clean half-illusory salt tang of the sea. The air moved warm and gentle against his skin. He was suddenly suffused with happiness and, as always in these rare transitory moments, intrigued by the pure physical nature of his joy. It moved along his veins, a gentle effervescence. Even to analyse its nature was to lose hold of it. But he recognized it for what it was, the first clear intimation since his illness that life could be good.
— P.D. James, The Black Tower
As long as something was a mystery, there was still the potential for amazement. Maybe that's where I went wrong before. Some riddles weren't meant to be solved.
— Chelsea Sedoti, The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett
There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.
— Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds
It’s all very well to have your eight suspects parading in their endless ring-around-the-rosebush outside the library. That’s fine. But give some sensible reason why they were there. If you must shower the room with bus tickets, provide a reason for that too. In other words, construct your story. Your present problem is not to explain the villainy of the guilty: it’s to explain the stupidity of the innocent.
— John Dickson Carr, The Door To Doom, And Other Detections
XVXVI, or 10-5-10-5-1, yielded H-E-H-E-A, which, unless she wanted to show her derisive laughter, made no sense.
— Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice
The thing is, Sara, writing's scary. You have to be prepared to go deep......And when your brain's shouting, 'No, no, no, I'm not going to think that thought; it's too dirty, it's too scary, it's too painful,' that's when you must make yourself think it and make yourself write it.
— Felicity Everett, The People at Number 9
You must push through the negativity and self-criticism that dam up your creativity and just let it flow. Be your authentic self. Write or sing or dance or paint with your whole being, without guardedness or cynicism and without trying to second-guess an audience.
— Felicity Everett, The People at Number 9
Look tonight at the stars. Let them overwhelm you in the postures of their bright dance. Face the vastness which they dot like silver bees, and sound with your own brain the mystery, hazarding at the inscrutable plan of things.
— Robert H. Barlow
The Sunday morning choir raised their voices to fever pitch with another gospel tune. Slurring voices filled with thick drawls of the local accent. The choir a mix of young girls her own age, alongside elderly women, with a few men thrown in for good measure. The old ladies wore tight gray buns and librarian glasses. Could they have ever been young? Could their husbands have?
— Jaime Allison Parker, Justice of the Fox