S. S. Van Dine Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Only, as long as we're going insane we may as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.

S. S. Van Dine
Good God! he mummered. I don't know what to believe.
In that respect, returned Vance, you're in the same disheartenin' predic'ment as all the philosophers.

S. S. Van Dine
You're probably right, sighed Vance. I haven't any coruscatin' arguments to combat you with. Only, I'm disappointed. I don't like anticlimaxes, especially when they don't jibe with my idea of the dramatist's talent. Pardee's death at this moment is too deuced neat—it clears things up too tidily. There's too much utility in it, and too little imagination.

S. S. Van Dine
Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.

S. S. Van Dine
I trust the clergy are not involved in this problem. They're notoriously unscientific. One can't attack them with mathematics.

S. S. Van Dine
Circumstantial evidence, Markham, is the utt'rest tommyrot imag'nable. Its theory is not unlike that of our present-day democracy. The democratic theory is that if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, you produce intelligence; and the theory of circumst'ntial evidence is that if you accumulate a sufficient number of weak links, you produce a strong chain.

S. S. Van Dine
Oh, my dear fellow! I'm not indulgin' in implications. I'm merely givin' tongue to my youthful curiosity, don't y' know.

S. S. Van Dine
Anyway, you know full well I never wear boutonnieres. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone players.

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

S. S. Van Dine
A fairy tale in terms of blood—a world in anamorphosis—a perversion of all rationality.… It's unthinkable, senseless, like black magic and sorcery and thaumaturgy. It's downright demented.

S. S. Van Dine
Do you play chess, by the by? asked Vance.
Used to. But no more. A beautiful game, though—if it wasn't for the players.

S. S. Van Dine
He spent considerable time at his clubs; his favorite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort

S. S. Van Dine
As I understand it, your policemen are chosen by their height and weight; they must meet certain requirements as to heft—as thought the only crimes they had to cope with were riots and gang feuds. Bulk—the great American ideal, whether in art, architecture, table d'hôte meals, or detectives. An entrancin' notion.

S. S. Van Dine
Giving full rein to one's cynicism as one goes along produces a normal outlet and maintains an emotional equilibrium.

S. S. Van Dine
It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers--men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton--have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times--a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime.

S. S. Van Dine