Crime Stories Quotes

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.

Americans love to read about violence.

Crime and legal stories, broadly speaking, are just where my interest happens to lie.

Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.

Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.

The most enduring stories in literature generally have some kind of crime at their center, whether it's the bloody butchery of 'Hamlet,' the lecherous misanthropes of Dickens or the lone gunman from 'The Great Gatsby.'

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries.

I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.

I will live in TV Land watching 'Columbo.' I also like my 'Forensic Files,' all of that true crime.

There's definitely a fascination with crime stories and stories of characters acting out against authority.

I grew up reading crime fiction mysteries, true crime - a lot of true crime - and it is traditionally a male dominated field from the outside, but from the inside what we know, those of us who read it, is that women buy the most crime fiction, they are by far the biggest readers of true crime, and there's a voracious appetite among women for these stories, and I know I feel it - since I was quite small I wanted to go to those dark places.

I have been addicted to crime since I was born. I was making up crime stories when I was a 4- or 5-year-old kid.

I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.

Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.

Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

When I was younger, I watched all the detective shows.

All societies have these cases. There are many, many crime cases that remain famous from the times of the Romans. The Bible is full of crime stories. You can almost flip to a page. Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers is a crime story. The Bible is full of crime stories.

I was a late bloomer. I was 38 when my first book was out and 43 when my first crime novel was out. I had a story that could only be told as a crime story. I think the genre is good; it deals with the fundamental questions of life and death. The problem is there are too many bad crime stories.

If you think about the traditional mafia stories we grew up on, it is always about the death of criminal organisations - things like the 'Sopranos' - the last vestiges of once proud families subsumed by the modern era.

There's good money in true crime, I'm told, and plenty of it lying around, but it's a devil of an art form.

Crime fiction is the new rock n' roll.

I don't believe in the term 'guilty pleasure,' because it implies I should feel ashamed for liking something. A real guilty pleasure would be, I don't know, taking gratification in some stranger's ghastly death or something - which I guess I do enjoy, because I read a ton of true crime.

I love all kinds of movies. I'd especially like to make some, you know, violent crime drama.

Many of the less prolific killers' stories go unheard because they simply don't make good books.

I've made a career writing about fictitious anti-heroes. To create these worlds, I've spent a lot of time with active members on both sides of the law. And if I had to pick the most interesting of the two, the choice is obvious - we all love the guys in black.