John Dickson Carr > Quotes

“I am a mathematician, sir. I never permit myself to think.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Hollow Man

“We don't fall in love with a woman because of her good character.”
― John Dickson Carr, He Who Whispers

“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

“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

“My only claim to distinction among writers is that I do not believe my life contains any materials for a novel. I have prowled around Limehouse and the gamiest sections of Paris, but I have never yet seen (a) a really choice murder in a locked room, (b) a mysterious mastermind or (c) a really good‐looking adventuress with slant eyes.”
― John Dickson Carr

“I have committed another crime, Hadley,' he said. 'I have guessed the truth again.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Three Coffins

“To write good history is the noblest work of man.”
― John Dickson Carr

“The poor fool hadn't realized that if all mankind shares a folly or an illusion, and likes to share it even knowing what it is, then the illusion is much more valuable and fine a kind of thing than the ass who wants to upset it.”
― John Dickson Carr

“If you stood motionless in the stream of time, listening to crying voices out of the past, you might presently believe that your feelings or your neighbour's were of puny significance because they had been experienced so often before and would be experienced again when you had gone. Whereas they did matter; they were the only reality; there was no shame in feeling the hurt.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Witch of the Low Tide

“paperchase. And it is on a deduction drawn from”
― John Dickson Carr, Death-Watch

“accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition,”
― John Dickson Carr, The Hollow Man

“I was startled to see that there was neither nervousness nor affected ease about him.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Plague Court Murders

“How’s it going, Inspector?” Halliday inquired, somewhat genially.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Plague Court Murders

“Caf6”
― John Dickson Carr, And So to Murder

“But, if you're going to analyse impossible situations,' interrupted Pettis, 'why discuss detective fiction?'

'Because,' said the doctor, frankly, 'we're in a detective story, and we don't fool the reader by pretending we're not. Let's not invent elaborate excuses to drag in a discussion of detective stories. Let's candidly glory in the noblest pursuits possible to characters in a book.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Hollow Man

“coining,”
― John Dickson Carr, The Judas Window

“As a general rule, these sleight-of-hand tricks are a dead give-away to the murderer once you've tumbled to the means of workin' the illusion. A special sort of crime indicates a special set of circumstances, and those circumstances narrow down to fit one person like a hangman's cap when you know what they are.”
― John Dickson Carr

“Rampole,”
― John Dickson Carr, The Three Coffins

“But for the greatest long - range murder ever committed in a locked room, gents, I commend you to one of the most brilliant short detective stories in the history of detective fiction. (In fact, it shares the honours for supreme untouchable top - notch excellence with Thomas Burke's The Hands of Mr Ottermole, Chesterton's The Man in the Passage, and Jacques Futrelle's The Problem of Cell 13.) This is Melville Davisson Post's The Doomdorf Mystery”
― John Dickson Carr, The Hollow Man

“We’ve all met one or two women, I daresay, it would have been better if we hadn’t met.” “Now there,” observed Cullingford Abbot, “we have a short history of mankind expressed with admirable terseness.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Witch of the Low Tide

“Люди не составляют представление о членах семьи. Они принимают то, что есть, и, видит бог, это ещё не самое худшее.”
― John Dickson Carr, To Wake the Dead

“Son, frankness is a virtue only when you're talkin' about yourself, and then it's a nuisance.”
― John Dickson Carr

“They got the body out this morning, with a little silver crucifix twined about the neck. She had already written a note which she just addressed ‘To the Police Department,’ confessing that she had shot LaGarde. She confessed to a crime she did not commit.”
― John Dickson Carr, Castle Skull: A Rhineland Mystery

“I beg your pardon,” said Abbot. “You are quite right, of course. I am not myself fond of bad taste, though I am always displaying it. Go on.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Witch of the Low Tide

“There’s no keeping anything from you, is there, Devil-face?” she demanded, rolling about in her seat almost gaily. “Now, then, how did you know that?”
― John Dickson Carr, Castle Skull: A Rhineland Mystery

“Every time he spoke, in fact, he had the appearance of thinly addressing an audience, raising and lowering his head as though from notes, and speaking in a penetrating singsong towards a point over his listeners' heads. You would have diagnosed a Physics B.Sc. with Socialist platform tendencies, and you would have been right.”
― John Dickson Carr, The Three Coffins