Anthony Horowitz Quotes

“As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Routine is the one thing the can get you killed. It tells the enemy where you're going and when you're going to be there.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Point Blank

“I had chosen to play the detective—and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I've ever read about, it's their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn't actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn't trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It's a relationship based entirely on deception and it's one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That's one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You're part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“I've watched every episode of Poirot and Midsomer Murders on TV. I never guess the ending and I can't wait for the moment when the detective gathers all the suspects in the room and, like a magician conjuring silk scarves out of the air, makes the whole thing make sense.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Why does anyone take photographs ever? We never look at them anymore.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I'm not making any judgement. It's just the sort of thing I can't help but notice.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor—and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us—the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“You'd have thought that after twenty years editing murder mysteries I'd have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Alan invented all sorts of ways of expressing things so that only he and I understood. He used language as a place for us to hide.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Pünd remembered their first case together when Fraser had failed to notice that his travelling companion, on the three-fifty train from Paddington, was actually dead.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Much later that night, I thought the door opened and a man came into the bedroom. He was leaning on a stick. He didn't say anything but he stood there, looking sadly at Andreas and me, and as a shaft of moonlight came slanting in through the window, I recognized Atticus Pünd. I was asleep, of course, and dreaming, but I remember wondering how he had managed to enter my world before the thought occurred to me that maybe it was I who had entered his.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it’s never good news. Alex Rider was woken by the first chime. His eyes flickered open, but for a moment he stayed completely still in his bed, lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Stormbreaker

“I nearly choked on my milkshake.”
― Anthony Horowitz, The Falcon's Malteser

“This business with Sir Magnus Pye had got off to an inauspicious start. It was one thing to be stabbed in your own home—but to be decapitated with a medieval sword the moment darkness fell was quite simply outrageous. Saxby-on-Avon was such a quiet place! Yes, there had been that business with the cleaner, the woman who had tripped up and fallen down the stairs, but this was something else again. Could it really be true that one of the villagers, living in a Georgian house perhaps, going to church and playing for the local cricket team, mowing their lawn on Sunday mornings and selling home-made marmalade at the village fête, was a homicidal maniac? The answer was yes—quite possibly.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“I couldn't see myself as some twenty-first century Shirley Valentine, sitting on the rocks, a thousand miles from the nearest Waterstones.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“Breakfast, Noah muttered.
Greasy and disgusting, said Matt.
You don't want to eat it?
I wasn't talking about breakfast. I was talking about you.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Raven's Gate