Quotes

 

• "I get a little sick of murder, but I think it's worth it."
  • (Margery Allingham, letter to Frank Swinnerton, 13 July 1938)
• "Crime writers are a kind of reflection of society's conscience. We observe, report and show what everyone really wants - that violence ought to be stopped and crime doesn't pay. That seems perfectly moral to me."
• "I regard my books as novels, not just as thrillers or detective stories"
  • (Margery Allingham, quoted Richard Martin, Ink in Her Blood, p 15)
• "The detective story writer is a web spinner by profession, a deceiver with a licence, but since all licensed bodies are subject to certain rules the author of the successful puzzle story is compelled to deceive without cheating."
• (Margery Allingham, quoted Richard Martin, Ink in Her Blood, p 55)
• "A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern."
  • (Margery Allingham, Black Plumes, 1940)
• "Chemists employed by the police can do remarkable things with blood. They can … weave it into a rope to hang a man."
  • (Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke, 1952)
• "Once sex rears its ugly 'ead it's time to steer clear."
  • (Margery Allingham, Flowers for the Judge, 1936)
• "The more I see of men, the more I approve of women taking a hand in the affairs of the country."
  • (Emily Allingham, [Margery's mother], letter, June 1932)
• "To Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to feature in a story which is also, even when judged by the fixed standards of criticism, a distinguished novel."
  • ("Torquemada" review of The Fashion in Shrouds, in the Observer, 1938)
• "He [Campion] belonged to a post-war generation, that particular generation which was too young for one war and most prematurely too old for the next. It was the generation which had picked up the pieces after the holocaust indulged in by its elders, only to see its brave new world wearily smashed again by younger brothers."
  • (Margery Allingham, Traitor's Purse, 1941)
• "...you've no idea how difficult it is to finish a modest thriller when all your neighbours are mucking about in the dawn looking for nuns with sub-machine guns and collapsible bicycles to arrive by parachute."
  • (Margery Allingham on the difficulty of writing in wartime, letter to Time and Tide, 1940)
• Re: Taxation of Artists "Sir, - Anybody who manages to pay out of the uncertain rewards from the sale of his brainchildren taxes demanded under a system devised to fit those earning a regular wage is a bit of an artist."
  • (Margery Allingham, Letter to The Times, 7 Jan 1955)

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