“They murdered him.”

“Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?”

“How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him.”

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.”

“(on forgiveness) Didn't he and I stand together before an all seeing God convicted of the same murder? For I had murdered him with my heart and my tongue.”

“Apparently, dancing for him and throwing herself at him weren't enough. Apparently, she had to nearly commit murder to arouse him enough to attack her.”

“Zola, who has so faithfully described the impulse to commit murder, did not himself commit a murder, because there were so many other characters in him. The actual murderer is in the grasp of his own disposition: the author describing the murder is swayed by a whole kingdom of impulses. Zola would know the desire for murder much better than the actual murderer would know it, he would recognise it in himself, if it really came to the surface in him, and he would be prepared for it. In such ways the criminal instincts in great men are intellectualised and turned to artistic purposes as in the case of Zola, or to philosophic purposes as with Kant, but not to actual crime.”

“[About Pinkie's character] The word murder conveyed no more to him than the word 'box', 'collar', 'giraffe.”

“You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman.”

“A man lusts to become a god … and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?”