Quotes About Crime

Violence is inevitable in crime novels, but there are many different ways to tell a story. I use my characters' reactions to illustrate the worst moments rather than let readers witness them at first hand.

I don't think a reporter necessarily becomes an arm of law enforcement. I think a reporter is like any other citizen. If a citizen can do his or her duty as a witness, if they have information about a crime, or if they have information about a criminal group, I think that there's a duty on the part of the citizen.

Quality-of-life policing is based on probable cause - an officer has witnessed a crime personally or has a witness to the crime.

The main difference is, in 'Cold Case,' the victim sometimes had been dead for decades - you didn't have the advantage of being able to interview the victim. You had to piece together the circumstances surrounding the crime from witnesses and other evidence. 'SVU' is much more immediate in that you can talk to the victim.

With 'River Monsters', I am the investigator: here's the crime scene, I talk to witnesses, I establish a suspects list, I narrow it down; here's the prime suspect, I go and arrest the prime suspect - who often doesn't want to come quietly.

The F.B.I. is about nuts and bolts. It's all about witnesses and procedure and walking the streets.

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

Because of Rudy Giuliani's policies of reducing crime in New York City, tens of thousands of black men, women, and children are alive today that wouldn't have been otherwise.

The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity.

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

People who commit crimes are generally reluctant to tell on themselves.

If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.

My college senior thesis was going to be on the American private investigator.

I hear they burn for murder. Well, they say it just takes a second to die.

I've always wanted to play a hard-boiled gumshoe, as they say.

Any thief or criminal or robber who enters another country in order to steal should expect to be exposed to murder at any time. For the American forces to expect anything from me personally reflects a very narrow perception.

Thieves don't usually make good therapists.

Thieves must sit in prison.

You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen to them and around them, and crime is the ideal genre for making this come about.

I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history.

It's like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it's going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there's going to be Some action.

Let those men who still have these misguided ideas, let those men who still have these hallucinations, realize that by anarchism, by dastardly crimes, they cannot bring about good government; let them realize that these methods have not succeeded in any country of the world and are not likely to succeed in India.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.