Red Herring Quotes

When you're watching a Hitchcock movie, you, for most of the movie, are playing the guessing game. What's the endgame? What's the plot? How are these people involved? It's the best way to tell the story, and as a viewer, that's what you want to experience.

...and then a murder mystery will occur.

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'

The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.

Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.

Every once in while, a person will do something obvious and direct that is no more than it appears to be. I think they do it to throw you off.

I would love to do a mystery movie.

Misdirection is one of my strengths.

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.

Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.

It's so funny, I've done so many projects where I've been interrogated. I guest starred on almost every hour drama, and I'm always the guy they think is the bad guy but then they find out is not.

When you see Robert Englund in a movie, you think he is the bad guy, but if I'm not the bad guy, and I'm supposed to just kind of fool the audience, it makes it a lot easier for whichever actor is the bad guy. So I find myself doing a lot of those, I think they're called red herring characters, faking out the audience.

I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.

The 'Scream' series is unique in that it's an ongoing murder mystery, even though it's a different killer, so if you know who that killer is, then half of the fun of the movie is gone.

I'm wondering whether to have someone go around with my mobile to completely throw everybody off the scent. I could appear in weird places.

I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing.

I've been surprised that 'Elizabeth is Missing' has been so well received as a crime book. I love mystery stories, and that is what I decided to write.

Murder mysteries are puzzles that are fun to resolve.

I'm kind of ashamed to be a celebrity. I don't understand wanting to read about other people's dirty laundry. I think celebrity is the biggest red herring society has ever pulled on itself.

When a pointed question is beaten back with an attack or threat of, 'How dare you...' it's a reliable signal that deception is involved. Trump is a master at this.

The tradition, particularly in old-school British detective things, is everybody's in the drawing room or the library, and they're all gathered, and the detective walks around and tells them where they were that night, and you see the flashbacks.

I have a three-piece suit. I’m an art collector. I have a funny accent. So I’m probably the killer.

When I was nine years old, I wrote a short story called 'How to Build a Snowman,' from which no practical snowperson-crafting techniques could be gleaned. The story was an assignment for class and it featured a series of careful but meaningless instructions. Of course, the building of the snowman was a red herring.

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention.

The queen of crime, Agatha Christie, was always more concerned about the clockwork cleverness of the plot, never the investigator.