Quotations About / On: MURDER

One murder made a villain,
Millions a hero.

The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.

Time kills me terribly.
"Time shall not murder you," He said,
"Nor the green nought be hurt;
Who could hack out your unsucked heart,
O green and unborn and undead?"
I saw time murder me.

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.

Suppose by chance you do get picked up. What have you done? You shot a horse; that isn't first degree murder; in fact, it isn't even murder; in fact, I don't know what it is.

"If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?"
"And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page."

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

List, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
...
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
...
Murder most foul, as in the best it is,
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

It is curious to speculate why pornography is considered especially likely to stimulate its readers into performing the activities described. The literature of murder is a vast one, particularly in the English language; enormous ingenuity is expended by writers in devising techniques for killing people, and these techniques are described with the greatest possible realism. The motives which would make murder desirable or profitable are so elaborated that they could easily persuade a reader into whose hands these books would be likely to fall that their case was parallel with that described in the book so that their problems could be solved in the same way. But I have never seen it seriously suggested that the literature of murder—detective stories or crime stories—tended to deprave and corrupt, or would incite weak-minded or immature readers into carrying out in reality the activities described in the fantasies. On the contrary, the literature of murder is considered particularly "healthy" and desirable; and in England representatives of all the most respected professions have stated that detective stories are among their favorite reading. Musing about murder is apparently "healthy"; musing about sexual enjoyment is not.

Murder's never perfect. Always comes apart sooner or later. And when two people are involved, it's usually sooner.... Sometime, somewhere, they've got to meet. Their emotions are all kicked up. Whether it's love or hate doesn't matter. They can't keep away from each other. They may think it's twice as safe because there are two of them. But it isn't twice as safe. It's ten times twice as dangerous. They've committed a murder! And it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip, and the last stop is the cemetery.