95 Murder Mystery Quotes

Dive into the spine-chilling world of murder mysteries, where every clue unravels a new layer of suspense and every revelation keeps you on the edge of your seat. Whether you’re an avid reader of crime novels, a devotee of whodunit TV series, or just someone who enjoys the clever intricacies of a well-crafted mystery, there's something inherently intriguing about untangling complex narratives and uncovering the truth. We've curated a collection of the top 95 murder mystery quotes to not only reignite your passion for the genre but also to shed light on the genius behind these suspenseful stories. Brace yourself as we explore the brilliant minds and unforgettable lines that make murder mysteries so irresistibly captivating.

1. “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” - Albert Einstein

2. “It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.” - Thomas Paine

3. “rain slowly slides down the glass as if the night is crying.” - Patricia Cornwell

4. “He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

5. “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.” - William Shakespeare

6. “Heute ist der Terrorist an die Stelle des Mörders von einst getreten.” - Heribert Prantl

7. “When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.” - Thomas Harris

8. “You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.” - Sigmund Freud

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

10. “The more you love,the more love you have to give.It's the only feeling we have which is infinite...” - Christina Westover

11. “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

12. “How Many Lumberjacks Does it Take to Ravish, Maim and Kill Five Feisty Female Co-eds?Read 'Lumberjacked' by Rich Bottles Jr. to find out!Lumberjacked: A Supernatural Tale of Murder and Mayhem in the Mountain State.” - Rich Bottles Jr.

13. “Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)” - Jennifer Birkett

14. “And then I recalled those mysterious stories about the waxworkers of the middle ages and the public reprobation attached to their trade. Did they not live in cellars, in the eternal twilight propitious for enchantments and apparitions? Their visionary art (who, more than they, evoked a truer image of life?) was closely related to that of magicians: bewitchments were carried out with wax figures, witch trials are full of them, and one particular legend haunted me above all, that of the modeler from Anspach, who slowly squeezed the soul and the life out of his model in order to animate his painted waxwork and then, having finished his work of art, awaited nightfall to go and bury the corpse in the ditch at the city walls.” - Jean Lorrain

15. “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.” - Sue Grafton

16. “Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.” - P.D. James

17. “Would you dare to walk with the beast on the dark side of the moon?” - Demetri Daskova

18. “It is wrong to kill anyone. It is wrong to kill those who kill. It is wrong to kill the executioner. The laws on murder must be killed!” - Charles Nodier

19. “Try to be thoughtful, don't make the poor man say it;see how human he is,he has children of his own,it is your job to ask:Is she dead?And he will nod and say yesAnd now he can never not nod.And now he can never say no.And now he can never not sayyes.” - Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

20. “The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.” - Rick Yancey

21. “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

22. “Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?” - Sylvia Plath

23. “Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" says Peeta. "It costs everything you are.” - Suzanne Collins

24. “The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.” - Dimitri Merejkowski

25. “Q: What do Jesus and Nicole Brown Simpson have in common? A: They were both killed by the Joooooooose.” - Helen Thomas

26. “But what if the monsters come?""Fancy." Kit looked away from the drama to stare at her sister, surprised. "We are the monsters.” - Dia Reeves

27. “The late hour is such a friend; it has been for so many years. There is not a soul around as I carry Riley downstairs and dump him in my trunk. It is good, for I am not in the mood to kill again, and murder, for me, is very much tied to my mood, like making love. Even when it is necessary.” - Christopher Pike

28. “There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,Doing more murder in this loathsome world,Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.” - William Shakespeare

29. “A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, Utah will use most extreme power & execute a killer. Mourn his victims. Justice.[...] I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.[...] We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as I'm told Gardner is dead. Watch it at www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html.” - Mark L. Shurtleff

30. “The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.” - Katherine Anne Porter

31. “We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

32. “This is going to be murder," Fransic whispered to Mr. Trimes. "Pure murder.""I'm glad to see your confidence returning, Mr. Tucket. Just a few minutes ago you were ready to give up. Now you're talking about killing him.""I meant it the other way.""Oh.” - Gary Paulsen

33. “Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!” - Stephen King

34. “A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” - Henry Adams

35. “But isn't it likely that everyone in this world...has killed someone or other on their way to the top?...All I wanted was a chance to be a man--and for that, one murder is enough.” - Aravind Adiga

36. “It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are.” - Suzanne Collins

37. “Something of a pattern had started to form and it was ugly.” - Jeff Rice

38. “It'd be great to be so famous that if I murder someone, I will never, ever, ever serve any jail time, even if it's totally obvious to everyone that I did it.” - Mindy Kaling

39. “You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile pop moppets littering the music television and the gossip columns. I've killed more people than Paris Hilton has desemenated, I was famous before she was here and I'll be famous after she's gone. I am the mainstream. I am, in fact, the only true rock star of the modern age. Every newspaper in America never fails to report on my comeback tours, and I get excellent reviews.” - Warren Ellis

40. “The king! I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.” - Alexandre Dumas

41. “All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.” - P.D. James

42. “What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure.” - P.D. James

43. “A hanging, though, was something different. I got to thinking. We hadn’t never been to nothing just to have a good time. A hanging was special and we was all getting to go.” - Eddie Whitlock

44. “And at that moment, Thibaut knew he was a murderer. He had murdered his brother that night; he had taken away his brother's soul.” - C. JoyBell C.

45. “The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.” - Patrick Ness

46. “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

47. “The men stop coming after Hunt goes missing. We learned from the last brave soul to visit that they whispered all sorts of stories to answer his disappearance. My favorite is that we ate him. We cooked him up with our whore-earned corn, a dozen rats’ eyes, and a bat wing. Even I couldn’t have thought of anything more perfect.” - Rachel A. Marks

48. “In another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man. But this is not that kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the miserable son of a bitch with a shovel. That's the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho.” - Christopher Moore

49. “The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left for you, poor human murderers, to do? To kill your victims? But they already had the seed of death in them; all you could do was to hasten its fruition by a year or two.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

50. “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

51. “Constance: Tell me, what happened to William's little maid? I never saw her again after that dinner.Mary Maceachran: Elsie? -- She's gone.Constance: Oh, it's a pity, really. I thought it was a good idea to have someone in the house who is actually sorry he's dead.” - Julian Fellowes

52. “Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was just too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn't realize it until the day we killed him.” - Gail Giles

53. “I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep.” - Astrid Cruz

54. “Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them.” - P.D. James

55. “Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her.” - Iain Pears

56. “I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone doing pretty much the same thing except in a different way. And all the time they're holding heaven in their hands.” - Jim Thompson

57. “... is it truly possible to steal a life, if... the Self is eternal and cannot die? Should this be so, then one who 'murders' does no more than transgress against the will of another, whose choice it is to live. At bottom, a murderer offends not against the body, but against the spirit.” - Ki Longfellow

58. “You should have died when I killed you.” - John le Carré

59. “The man had a smooth voice, like velvet. “I’m Detective Inspector Me. Unusual name, I know. My family were incredibly narcissistic. I’m lucky I escaped with any degree of humility at all, to be honest, but then I’ve always managed to exceed expectations. You are Kenny Dunne, are you not?”“I am.”“Just a few questions for you, Mr Dunne. Or Kenny. Can I call you Kenny? I feel we’ve become friends these past few seconds. Can I call you Kenny?”“Sure,” Kenny said, slightly baffled.“Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s important you feel comfortable around me, Kenny. It’s important we build up a level of trust. That way I’ll catch you completely unprepared when I suddenly accuse you of murder.” - Derek Landy

60. “If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions of spontaneous abortions everyday, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes-and too great mountain of other natural evils to list besides. It would also,as the putative designer of human nature, ultimately be responsible or the ubiquitous and unbeatable human propensities for hatred, malice, greed, and all other sources of the cruelty and murder people inflict on each other hourly.” - A.C. Grayling

61. “The shots left a hard ringing sound within the closeness of the brick walls. Terry held the pistol at arm's length on a level with his eyes--the Russian Tokarev resembling an old-model Colt .45, big and heavy--and made the sign of the cross with it over the dead. He said, "Rest in peace, motherfuckers," turned, and walked out of the beer lady's house to wait at the side of the road.” - Elmore Leonard

62. “Detective Inspector Eccles sighed. He may ordinarily have met his sigh with the question of why the newly appointed Superintendent Dickinson was turning up to this late hour crime scene, he may also ordinarily question why his superior officer was dressed as Julius Caesar, in full tunic and green leafy wreath, yet ever since the new and youngest-ever-appointed superintendent had arrived at the Met it had been all too clear he was an officer who didn’t quite do things by the eBook.” - Tom Conrad

63. “In March of that year, I saw a man named Paul Barkley shot to death. It happened late at night in the parking lot of a café in Santa Rosa called Galileo’s.” - Frederick Weisel

64. “[Prince Humperdinck] was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get his fingers to her throat before even the start of a scream. He had been practicing on giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren’t necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn’t make them so.” - William Goldman

65. “She might have liked to try to strangle him with those slender fingers of hers, but she wanted to make a job of it and this great patience with which she waited for her claws to grow was in itself a form of enjoyment.” - Émile Zola

66. “Essay on Adam"There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell.Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four:he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him.Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam.The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth,fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth,nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between:he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between theseis only an issue of whether the demonswork from the inside out or from the outsidein: the onetheological question.” - Robert Bringhurst

67. “Gosh, it's easy!' he marveled, open-mouthed. 'I never knew before how easy it is to kill anyone! Twenty years to grow 'em, and all it takes is one little push!'He was suddenly drunk with some new kind of power, undiscovered until this minute. The power of life and death over his fellowmen! Everyone had it, everyone strong enough to raise a violent arm, but they were afraid to use it. Well, he wasn't! And here he'd been going around for weeks living from hand to mouth, without any money, without enough food, when everything he wanted lay within his reach all the while! He had been green all right, and no mistake about it! Death had become familiar. At seven it had been the most mysterious thing in the world to him, by midnight it was already an old story. ("Dusk To Dawn")” - Cornell Woolrich

68. “Insecure or homicidal: the adjectives don't bother me one bit.” - William Giraldi

69. “(A murderer about their victim:)"He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been there to see how he enjoyed the real thing.” - P.D. James

70. “from the Basement tapes Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do."Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him."Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live.""If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it!” - Dave Cullen

71. “It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.” - Ryu Murakami

72. “People often speak of hell, not wanting to go there, avoiding it..etc. I never had that problem because hell is a state of mind. Look around you; rape, murder, wars, hatred, envy...my friend; you're already there!!” - Sandra Chami Kassis

73. “At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no friends or toys, you toyed with dreams of murder, because that is a game to play alone.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

74. “The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flicker and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people - half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like "You reap what you sow" and "Victory is not the same as satisfaction."Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising that our stones reflect our history.” - Pamela Freeman

75. “It felt odd to have interrupted the life of someone she knew nothing about, to kill someone she had only just met, as though killing needed intimacy, deep knowledge of the other, to make it all right.” - Pamela Freeman

76. “How came she by her death? How came she there? Was she slain by accident, or had she met with violence? were the questions that pressed upon our thoughts. But we said little then and after a time left her where we found her. It mattered not to her that the bed was hard or the air cold.("A Night In An Old Castle")” - George Payne Rainsford James

77. “To spare Cloyce's victims further indignities to their memory, I must be a scourge. To prevent others from perhaps being infected by Cloyce's depravity by watching him at work, I must be a scourge. To prevent time management technology from falling into the hands of authorities who, if not already corrupt, would be corrupted by it, I must be a scourge.Scourges aren't heroes.I had never imagined myself to be a hero, but never had I imagined I would be this.Scourges transgress against social and sacred order.A scourge went into darker territory than that. A scourge was not compelled to kill by mental imbalance or emotional confusion or selfish desire. A scourge made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in numbers that exceeded what was absolutely necessary to ensure self-preservation and the defense of the innocent. Even if he killed for the right reason, he was in rebellion against social order and commanding authority.Who scourges will be scourged. In fulfilling this dark role in Roseland, I would bring about my own death.Yet I knew I would not retreat from my decision.” - Dean Koontz

78. “all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt.” - George R.R. Martin

79. “Out there was a man who had murdered his daughter. And another who had stepped on her heart. His hatred should be aimed at the one who killed her, but all he could picture was Yoshino being literally kicked out of that car.” - Shuichi Yoshida

80. “You know you’re dealing with a numpty when her saving grace is that she didn’t help to cover up a murder.” - Rosen Trevithick

81. “Annabelle, I'm going to kill you!" I cried, frowning at the mess. Then I glanced down the stairway and gasped.It looked like someone had beaten me to it.” - Cleo Coyle

82. “I should not yield to it, he told himself once again as he walked along carrying the briefcase. Compulsion-obsession-phobia. But he could not free himself. It in my grip, I in its, he thought.” - Philip K. Dick

83. “Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.” - R.T. Wolfe

84. “If you don't like the path your life has taken, choose another.” - Robert G. DeMers

85. “Words do murder.” - Anthony Liccione

86. “Now I recall my emotions at that moment, children seem to me a remarkable race. They want so much to murder so many people, and they so rarely murder anybody at all.” - Rebecca West

87. “We ask our brain to stop worrying, stop obsessing, stop dreaming the same scary dreams again and again. But our brain rarely takes requests.” - Dan Poblocki

88. “It won't take me a minute to kill you. - Felix” - Donna Galanti

89. “Experiment or not, the government is always watching. - Felix” - Donna Galanti

90. “In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions.” - Laurie Matthew

91. “His kiss was like no other! His kiss was enchanted and fairy-tale like. He applied pressure, but just enough to feel his tenderness and warmth. I could feel his heart beating wildly as he pressed his chest against my chest all the while his loving lips brushed up against mine with a care-filled affection. His tongue lightly licked the outer edges of my mouth, and then searched for my tongue. The pursuit allowed a marriage of both tongues to meet - inspiring a mingling tango of hot and heavy French kissing to manifest profusely. We kissed like two hot and horny teenagers, our mouths moving and craving each others lips, in animalistic desires!” - Keira D. Skye

92. “Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.” - Peter Watts

93. “The defendant removed his gloves and started toward the victim. Mr. Farley, still teasing, said: “Ooo, he's taking his gloves off.” The defendant then pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed the victim in the neck. He also stabbed Mr. Farley in the arm as he fell to the floor. Mr. Farley looked up and cried: “Man, I was just kidding around.” The defendant responded: “Well, man, you should have never hit me in my face.” - Justice Franklin Cleckley

94. “If they will only hold their hands until the season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.” - Jack London

95. “Work is tough for everyone but for Kyle Shannon, it's just murder.” - Linda Mickey