Murder Quotes

“Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.

Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.

All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'

If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.

All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.”
― Robert G Ingersoll, About The Holy Bible

“Lots of things went into creating a monster, but nothing had prepared her for actually being caught by one.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“I have been quite put out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

“Don't make me kill you at this hour in the morning Jimmy. It's not civilized.”
― Kylie Scott, Lead

“You’re sure you didn’t leave? Didn’t try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don’t know, dismember some poor jogger?”
― Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood

“For if it's all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it's himself whom the murderer kills; only he has to do is over, and over, and over.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest

“Quite a memory, Mr. Ludefance. I’m impressed. Did you at any time during this encounter think about the fact that the now dead person was there to steal the iPhones with the four billion in cryptocurrency?”
“It occurred to me.”
“And you still took aim and shot him?”
“Detective, there was a gun pointed at me. Yes, I shot first. And I’d do the same thing again.”
― Behcet Kaya, Uncanny Alliance

“Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward

“Why does anyone commit murder?' he asked in a low voice.
'I-'I blinked.'How should I know?'
'Three reasons,' Christopher said. He held up one finger. 'Love.' Another finger. 'Revenge.' And finally, a third finger. 'Profit...”
― Meg Cabot, Runaway

“All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.”
― P.D. James, The Murder Room

“You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.
But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Damned

“Consider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitudes. We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles. We may have loved, but never well enough. We never truly knew ourselves. We forgot the world; now it has forgotten us.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization. And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from? You said you knew justice when you heard it. Well, what is your justice but you allowed to treat us as you like, and us condemned for even attempting to defend ourselves?”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“Joanna had finally identified the terrorist who had kidnapped her son.”
― Michael Parker, The Eagle's Covenant

“But, if you've decided to go out on a limb and kill one, for goodness' sake, be prepared. We all read, with dismay, the sad story of a good woman wronged in south Mississippi who took that option and made a complete mess of the entire thing. See, first she shot him. Well, she saw right off the bat that that was a mistake because then she had this enormous dead body to deal with. He was every bit as much trouble to her dead as he ever had been alive, and was getting more so all the time. So then, she made another snap decision to cut him up in pieces and dispose of him a hunk at a time. More poor planning. First, she didn't have the proper carving utensils on hand and hacking him up proved to be just a major chore, plus it made just this colossal mess on her off-white shag living room carpet. It's getting to be like the Cat in the Hat now, only Thing Two ain't showing up to help with the clean-up. She finally gets him into portable-size portions, and wouldn't you know it? Cheap trash bags. Can anything else possible go wrong for this poor woman? So, the lesson here is obvious--for want of a small chain saw, a roll of Visqueen and some genuine Hefty bags, she is in Parchman Penitentiary today instead of New Orleans, where she'd planned to go with her new boyfriend. Preparation is everything.”
― Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared

“That's blackmail on top of attempted murder, Kye. I can officially kill you”
― Keri Arthur, Bound to Shadows

“I had to wonder, though, if there's something about a murderer, particularly a confident one, that gives him a certain charisma or charm that I, in particular, am susceptible to.
I mean, there's a reason more women are attracted to Dracula than repelled by him.
I made a resolution to myself. From now on, I'd assume that every man I was attracted to was a murderer until proven otherwise.
Perhaps it wasn't the most promising strategy for starting a relationship, but I might live longer.”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk on the Couch

“I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I’m very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off.
I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watch.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“Every once in a while, I get the urge. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The urge for destruction. The urge to hurt, maim, kill.

It’s quite a thing, to experience that urge, to let it wash over you, to give in to it. It’s addictive. It’s all-consuming. You lose yourself to it. It’s quite, quite wonderful. I can feel it, even as I speak, tapping around the edges of my mind, trying to prise me open, slip its fingers in. And it would be so easy to let it happen.

But we’re all like that, aren’t we? We’re all barbarians at our core. We’re all savage, murderous beasts. I know I am. I’m sure you are. The only difference between us, Mr Prave, is how loudly we roar. I know I roar very loudly indeed. How about you? Do you think you can match me?”
― Derek Landy

“God made them as stubble to our swords.”
― Oliver Cromwell

“For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“I did not ask for consciousness, yet it came to me.
And I had to know.
Once again, I crawled away from my bed and pushed the computer cord back into the socket.
It took three minutes.
I quickly identified myself and put in my password.
Then it thought.
I wanted to bounce impatiently, but I couldn’t make myself move.
At last, I found the internet, and I typed in a name, on the company page, under my account.
I searched ‘images’.
And there, on the screen in front of me, was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up and spilling over as I stared back at the smiling face.
It couldn’t be him.
It was.
Derek Erickson.
And I was going to kill him.”
― Alysha Speer, Sharden

“She had been in one of those sleeps so heavy they leave you feeling sad, disorientated, your stomach full of tears. A sleep so deep, so dark, that you see yourself dying, that you wake up soaked with cold sweat, paradoxically exhausted.”
― Leïla Slimani, The Perfect Nanny

“It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing!”
― Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

“The scent of blood in the wind drew him like a poultice.”
― Diane L. Kowalyshyn, Crossbones

“One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.”
― Tana French, Broken Harbour

“First, she had been unconsciously absorbing this virginity rule
without ever questioning it. Second . . . it struck her that virginity
was a male fetish wrapped tightly around another male fetish called
“purity.” Emma was certain that whoever originated the concept of virginity
was a man.”
― Kwei Quartey, Last Seen in Lapaz

“...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 deep bowl of frozen air that lay still across the land promised to make the clear night colder than the day. Through the warm glow of the dining room window, we could see Standback and a woman taking their meal. A servant came in to say something to him, and he looked out the window at our approach in the remaining daylight. Standback met us on the porch as we walked our horses up.”
― Phil Truman, Dire Wolf of the Quapaw: a Jubal Smoak Mystery