Errol Morris Quotes

I've always felt if you followed a real private detective around, it would be boring.

I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop.

He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?

I think seeing some of the past can be helpful, especially if you're into crime solving.

Forensics I've always found absolutely fascinating. Anything to do with clues. And checking things out and solving.

I've always wanted to play a hard-boiled gumshoe, as they say.

I often keep my eyes open for bodies. I do. Ever since I was a kid. I think I read too many 'Nancy Drew' books.

I read a lot of 'Nancy Drew' books as a kid and considered myself a bit of an amateur detective.

I play a detective, very close to myself actually.

I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.

Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.

I've always loved investigations.

I like to consider myself a detective, which is how I justify my obsession with my phone. By nature, since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be a detective, and any portal to information and investigating things I have ever been given access to, I have dived into. With my phone, unfortunately, I have immediate access to everything.

There's something wonderful about that sort of Poirot, Agatha Christie-style investigation: cross-questioning all the witnesses and checking their stories, looking for means, motive, and opportunity.

Catching a culprit becomes really easy when there are video footages from the crime scene.

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

I am a private detective. I am paid to be inquisitive and presumptuous.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.

There's no police like Holmes.

Holmes, I'm a 24 year old prude.

I'm sure they're investigating everyone who was in the area.

If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

I was the weirdest kid: I wanted to see the police file - in grade school! I was convinced I could crack the case if I just had that file.

The main difference is, in 'Cold Case,' the victim sometimes had been dead for decades - you didn't have the advantage of being able to interview the victim. You had to piece together the circumstances surrounding the crime from witnesses and other evidence. 'SVU' is much more immediate in that you can talk to the victim.

In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.