Quotes from Colin Dexter

Beer barrel, though.

The room was cold as the grave.

you've never seen any evidence of drugs—any packets of drugs? Crack? Speed? Ecstasy? Anything? Anything at all?" Had she? "No," she said. Almost truthfully. "You've never smelt anything suspicious?" "I wouldn't know what they smell like, drugs

and Lewis felt excitement, and gratification. Somebody—some

But quietly now, rather movingly, Strange was making his plea: "Christ knows why, Lewis, but he'll always put himself out a bit for you. Did you realize that?

I'm past thinking,' said Sarah quietly.

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the one before. G. K. Chesterton

Time of death,' said Morse. 'Come on!

He was somewhat of a loner by temperament--because though never wholly happy when alone, he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people.

I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination.

There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse

Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. "It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body - a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body.

It is strange to relate (for a man in his profession) that in addition to incurable acrophobia, arachnophobia, myophobia, and ornithophobia, Morse also suffered from necrophobia; and had he known what awaited him now, it is doubtful whether he would have dared to view the horridly disfigured corpse at all.

Wives invariably flourish when deserted; it is the deserting male who often ends in disaster. (William McFee)

This was exactly why holidays were so valuable, he told himself: they allowed you to stand back a bit, and see where you were going rusty.

Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs. "You still sex-mad, I see, Morse," said the surgeon. "I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max." Morse turned over a page. "And you don't improve much either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.

The secret of a happy life, Lewis, is to know when to stop and then to go that little bit further.

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew): Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. (RUDYARD KIPLING)

During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them (Frank Moore Colby)

though I am still...exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours.

As a boy, he had been moved by those words of the dying Socrates, suggesting that if death were just one long, unbroken, dreamless sleep, then a greater boon could hardly be bestowed upon mankind.

He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. (SAMUEL JOHNSON)