Ss Van Dine Quotes

We're all servants. Some to our fellow men. Some to our vices.

Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing, there is no explanation.

We all do things in a certain individual way, according to our temperaments. Every human act — no matter how large or how small— is a direct expression of a man's personality, and bears the inevitable impress of his nature.

There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better.

Have you ever stopped to think how much of the world's disturbance is caused by butlers being able to see through keyholes?

Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization

Indra, with his thunderbolt, slew the dragon of drought. Trita, the son of Aptya, also slew a tri-headed dragon named Visvarupa. And there's the story of Keresaspa who slew the dragon Srvra and for whom Zarathustra intervened. Saam, the vassal of Minucihr, met many a dragon, but his great battle was with the one that haunted the river Kashaf. Then

Redman;

You'll mail me your new address, Dick?" she called back. "I'll be sending you picture post-cards from Cocos Island. I hope you'll like that, Dick." A smile of understanding passed between the two.

Close Button That quote has been saved. Van Dine S.S > Quotes > Quotable Quote (?) “You'll mail me your new address, Dick?" she called back. "I'll be sending you picture post-cards from Cocos Island. I hope you'll like that, Dick." A smile of understanding passed between the two.

The first that came to mind were Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room and Maurice Leblanc’s The Teeth of the Tiger; then there’s The Canary Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case, both by S.S. Van Dine; and finally, Dickson Carr’s The Plague Court Murders. I even considered that variation on the locked room murder theme of Roger Scarlett’s Murder Among the Angells.

But society is ignorant and venomous, devoid of any trace of insight or understanding. It exalts knavery, and worships stupidity. It crucifies the intelligent, and puts the diseased in dungeons.

Naturally,” Vance replied, “—since it’s an irrelevant factor in most crimes. Every one of us, my dear chap, has just as good a motive for killing at least a score of men as the motives which actuate ninety-nine crimes out of a hundred. And, when anyone is murdered, there are dozens of innocent people who had just as strong a motive for doing it as had the actual murderer. Really, y’ know, the fact that a man has a motive is no evidence whatever that he’s guilty—such motives are too universal a possession of the human race. Suspecting a man of murder because he has a motive is like suspecting a man of running away with another man’s wife because he has two legs.