selected by Patrick H. Moore
Pundits throughout the ages have expounded on murder. Here is a selection of 13 wise (or in some cases “wiseguy”) statements from luminaries on the subject selected from the Goodreads list:
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire
“I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2
“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”
― Jim Morrison
“If it weren’t for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy
“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
“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin’, but not to help.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
“Heaven is comfort, but it’s still not living.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
“On the whole, we’re a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain’s brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
“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, Slice of Cherry
“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”
― Johnny Cash, The Very Best of Johnny Cash
“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor — by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder