What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

P.D. James

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._James

You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.

Charlie Chaplin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Picasso

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.

William Zinsser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Zinsser

The English tradition offers the great tapestry novel, where you have the emotional aspect of a detective’s personal life, the circumstances of the crime, and, most important, the atmosphere of the English countryside that functions as another character.

Elizabeth George

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_George

When you turn a corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left

Langston Hughes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes

In a writer, there must always be two people – the writer and the critic.

Leo Tolstoy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you are born to stand out?

Ian Wallace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Wallace_(author)

The book itself is a curious artefact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades; even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell it to you again when you’re 50, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.

Ursula K. Le Guin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

(from Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, published in Harper’s Magazine February, 2008.)