Dark windows are often a very clear proof.

You want to make a guy comfortable enough to confess to murder.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

Those who are incapable of committing great crime, do not readily suspect them in others.

Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.

The reason crime doesn't pay is that when it does, it is called by a more respectable name.

If we could read the secret history of those we would like to punish, we would find in each life enough grief and suffering to make us stop wishing anything more on them.

Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.

Punishment is now unfashionable ... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

Distrust all those in whom the urge to punish is strong.

Many a man is saved from being a thief by finding everything locked up.

To steal from a thief is not theft. It is merely irony.

He that cries 'Stop, thief' is often he that has stolen the treasure.

A thief believes everybody steals.

Obviously crime pays, or there'd be no crime.

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

This woman goes into a gun shop and says, 'I want to buy a gun for my husband.' The clerk says, 'Did he tell you what kind of gun?' 'No,' she replied. 'He doesn't even know I'm going to shoot him.'

There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, 'Look for the woman.'

I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.