Carter Dickson > Quotes

“That sounds silly, doesn't it? Running away just because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings? But did you ever think how much of our lives we spend,dodging and twisting and making things difficult for ourselves, to avoid hurting somebody's feelings. Even people with absolutely no claim on us?”
― Carter Dickson, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp

“When a man can't sleep, he won't let anybody else sleep either. If he doesn't go off to dreamland the moment his head hits the pillow, he gets frightfully annoyed and won't stay in bed.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“...both Tom and I adore detective stories. Isn't that so, Tom?" [Lady Brace]
"Right!" agreed her husband...."But they've got to be proper detective stories. They've got to present a tricky, highly sophisticated problem, which you're given fair opportunity to solve."
"And," amplified Virginia, "no saying they're psychological studies when the author can't write for beans."
"Correct!" her husband agreed again. "Couldn't care less when you're supposed to get all excited as to whether the innocent man will be hanged or the innocent heroine will be seduced. Heroine ought to be seduced; what's she there for? The thing is the mystery. It's not worth reading if the mystery is simple or easy or no mystery at all.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“But the curator said nothing mattered so long as it looked all right to the ignorant." [Lady Brace]
"Sort of government motto. I see." [Sir Henry Merrivale]”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“I never met a gal who represented a mystery to me in quite the fetchin' way you did. It'd be dull and dreary just to find out how a crook got in and out of a locked room to steal a gold-and-jewelled cup. But it's very rummy, and fascinates the old man a bit, to wonder why a crook didn't steal a gold-and-jewelled cup he should have stolen.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“There's the pity of it. Elaine Cheeseman's not as young as you; she's forty, maybe. But she's not bad-looking at all. If she took the trouble to dress properly, and occasionally she smiled instead of keeping a frozen, holy-zeal look as though she were goin' to the Crusades instead of only to the polling-station, she might even be a bit of a smasher.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“That's the point. If these Labour MP's were really working men, they'd have some sense. But most of 'em, or at least the ones I've met, seem to be half-baked intellectuals who've specialized in economics or some such dreary muck.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“Not that anybody cares two pins about history in these days.We've got rid of history; history is all my eye. But I've got to tell you the facts.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“Put it in terms of the not-too-serious, if you like. Who got into that locked room? And how was it done? And why should the cup have been moved again? We're up against the essential detective problems of who, how, and why. Simply because there was no murder or near-murder, does that make the mystery one bit less baffling?”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“Sometimes it seems that men--yes, and even women too!--if they believe in a thing strongly enough, they get a strength or endurance that they wouldn't have believe possible.”
― Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup

“Though the pictured face was floridly coloured, you suspected pallor; a mind lightly balanced, and liable to snap from sheer weight of dreams.”
― Carter Dickson, The Red Widow Murders

“I am entirely at your service, Sir Henry. And I feel sure you will have no reason to complain of my frankness.'
H.M. blinked. 'Uh-huh. I was afraid of that.
Son, frankness is a virtue only when you're talkin' about yourself, and then it's a nuisance.
Besides, it's an impossibility. There's only one kind of person who's ever really willing to tell the truth about himself, and that's the kind they certify and shove in the bug-house. And when a person says he intends to be frank about other people, all it means is that he's goin' to give 'em a kick in the eye...”
― Carter Dickson (pseudonum)