Ellery Queen

The penetrating rain kept the play-going public close to its radios and bridge-tables.

Half those babies can't spell homicide.

“Where the average police system falls down,” came Ellery’s voice over his father’s shoulder, “is in its ruthless tracking down of gentlemen who dispose of such fungus as Mr. Monte Field.”

Immobility became frenzy, silence a dull unpunctuated roar.

Take care that you don’t repeat the unfortunate error of that ancient butcher who, with his twoscore apprentices, sought high and low for his most treasured knife when all the time it reposed quietly in his mouth.

More like a wake than the scene of a crime!

Some natures, through peculiar weakness, cannot endure the sight of a whining man.

I am always worried by omissions.

He could be theatrical when he chose, or mild, or pompous, or fatherly, or bulldogging.

There was naked silence in the room—a raw pulsing quiet that beat invisibly against the atmosphere.

Queer species, actors. All night they play God and then suddenly they find themselves reduced to ordinary street clothes and the ills that flesh is heir to.

We seem to be progressing, and yet nothing takes definite shape....

O wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee Death.

Something twitters a warning message in my subconscious.

It would pay you to cultivate the Delphic oracles, Michaels.

She was singularly free from the profundity of character which so often breeds animosity in others.

“I must have a moron’s intelligence,” grunted his father. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

The sunbeams that streamed in through the three wide windows, far from lending warmth to the ensemble, in some grotesque way only heightened the general effect of cheerlessness.

“Do you mind if I become Aesopian?”

A frightened silence so suddenly fraught with hidden complications of emotion that it seemed almost of physical substance.