A Quote by Shane Black

The great thing about detective stories, in particular, the case can always be interesting as well as the characters.

Shane Black

Quote Topics

About Always Case Characters Detective Detective Stories Great Great Thing Interesting Particular Stories Thing Well

Quote Author

Shane Black
American - Actor
Born: December 16, 1961

I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

Robert Cormier

The great thing about the show [ Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency] is that there is so much more to be revealed. There are questions about what each of these characters actually know, and nothing is what it seems.

Samuel Barnett

Crime makes for great drama and it's interesting because it delves into the darker side of us. Those kind of stories go way back, the detective and the criminal.

Mark Bonnar

Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

Carl Hiaasen

The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective.

Michael Connelly

The thing I don't like about detective stories is looking for criminals.

Natsuo Kirino

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.

Keira Knightley

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.

Stephen King

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

Dashiell Hammett

It's funny what [producer Richard Zanuck said about even though you can't quite place when the book or the story came into your life, and I do vaguely remember roughly five years old reading versions of Alice in Wonderland, but the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters and they're very well-defined characters, which I always thought was fascinating. Most people who haven't read the book definitely know the characters and reference them.

Johnny Depp

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

Ruskin Bond

Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

Carl Hiaasen

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.

Sergei Lukyanenko

Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail.

Brendan Gleeson

I always thought what an interesting idea because almost everybody's fascinated by the perpetrator of a crime; very few people study what happens to people for the rest of their lives, and how it affects not only that particular character but other characters around him as well.