Top 250 Anthony Horowitz Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “That’s why life is so different to fiction. Every day is a single page and you have no chance to thumb forward and see what lies ahead.”

— Anthony Horowitz

202. “I’m surrounded by silence but at the same time I’m drowning in words and it hardly ever leaves me, that sense of disconnection.”

— Anthony Horowitz

203. “I thought most kids would give their right arm to go into outer space,” Shulsky added unhelpfully. “Haven’t you ever dreamt about becoming an astronaut?” “No,” Alex said. “I always wanted to be a train driver.”

— Anthony Horowitz

204. “It is true that we have many ways of coping with loss,’ he said. ‘And grief is never rational.”

— Anthony Horowitz

205. “Theatre, at its best, is a candle that never goes out and all of these productions, along with many more, still burn in my memory.”

— Anthony Horowitz

206. “It’s easy enough to change your personality, to become evil. The trouble is, it stays with you. And it damages you.”

— Anthony Horowitz

207. “We used our imagination to create a world of wolves and vampires, ghosts and Cossack warriors – and we chased each other right through the middle of them.”

— Anthony Horowitz

208. “Well, I’m investigating a murder and now a woman has gone missing, so I wasn’t exactly waiting for an invitation,’ Hawthorne replied.”

— Anthony Horowitz

209. “You know, they say in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school. Makes you think, doesn’t it.”

— Anthony Horowitz

210. “Everything has a relevance,’ remarked Holmes.”

— Anthony Horowitz

211. “German accent, as if he.”

— Anthony Horowitz

212. “You’ve been thrown out, like me, and now you’re on the sidelines, scrubbing around for whatever petty cash you can persuade the police to throw your way and employing a second-rate hack author to write about you because you need the money. That’s what you’ve come to and I’m not afraid of you. Hawthorne Investigates? You’re pathetic!”

— Anthony Horowitz

213. “Moxham was strikingly beautiful, the sort of place that turns up in jigsaw puzzles or Harry Potter films.”

— Anthony Horowitz

214. “Given that Alderney isn’t exactly a whirl of social activity, I’m assuming you weren’t invited.”

— Anthony Horowitz

215. “It’s one of the paradoxes of being a writer that, physically, there’s not a huge difference between the debut novelist and the international best-seller: they’re each stuck in a room with a laptop, too many Jaffa Cakes and nobody to talk to. I once worked.”

— Anthony Horowitz

216. “Books grow old faster when they’re not being read.”

— Anthony Horowitz

217. “You can call it that if you like, but what was I to do? I was desperate. I would have had to move out. I had no job, no income, nowhere to go. Philip was in the cemetery and nobody cared about me.”

— Anthony Horowitz

218. “Have we killed everyone who needs killing?”

— Anthony Horowitz

219. “Adrian Lockwood was the sort of man who was hard to dislike although he was doing everything he could to help us on our way.”

— Anthony Horowitz

220. “I’ve often been quite tempted to write a book.” “You could have the launch party back in jail.”

— Anthony Horowitz

221. “So that was it: an unhealthy chef, a blind psychic, a war historian, a children’s author, a French performance poet, Hawthorne and me. Not quite the magnificent seven, I couldn’t help thinking.”

— Anthony Horowitz

222. “He was an invisible man with no background and no foreground, and plans, strategies and conspiracies he would have taken with him to the grave.”

— Anthony Horowitz

223. “AnthonyHorowitz.”

— Anthony Horowitz

224. “We need our literary heroes. Life is dark and complicated but they shine out. They’re the beacons that we follow.”

— Anthony Horowitz

225. “You know the trouble with this part of the world? It’s full of retired bankers and lawyers with too much time on their hands.”

— Anthony Horowitz

226. “This was a woman who didn’t just go to bed with a book. She went to bed with a library.”

— Anthony Horowitz

227. “He’s a prat. Just make sure you write that down.”

— Anthony Horowitz

228. “If he didn’t watch his diet, quit smoking and take exercise, he would soon be back in the cemetery for a more permanent visit.”

— Anthony Horowitz

229. “Almost two hundred thousand books are published in the UK every year and although some of them will have the advantage of a well-known author attached, the vast majority have just two or three words on a surface measuring no more than six by nine inches to sell themselves. Titles have to be short, smart and meaningful, easy to read, easy to remember and original. That’s asking a lot.”

— Anthony Horowitz

230. “She’s the only line of continuity running through the haphazardness of my life, even though there are times when I’m not even sure if I really know her.”

— Anthony Horowitz

231. “He had discovered the secret of war, the moment when soldiers cast aside their fear and become part of a machine that is so much bigger than themselves. For only then are they prepared to die.”

— Anthony Horowitz

232. “To enjoy something fully, you had to own it. And if you couldn’t buy it, then you would have to steal it.”

— Anthony Horowitz

233. “A novel is a container for 80,000 to 90,000 words and you might see it as a jelly mould. You pour them all in and hope they’ll set.”

— Anthony Horowitz

234. “There’s a poem by William Blake.’ He closed his eyes, recalling the words. ‘“I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

— Anthony Horowitz

235. “Try to Kill the Children!”

— Anthony Horowitz

236. “In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo. I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. After all, being unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I am.”

— Anthony Horowitz

237. “It would upset me to have to be discourteous to you, so I would be obliged if you did not communicate with me again except, of course, in the most urgent circumstances. I wish you a good evening.’ It.”

— Anthony Horowitz

238. “Was Giles a racist?”

— Anthony Horowitz

239. “But there have been times when I have been very much in the shadows, when I have looked into the valley of death and wished – and wished I could enter.”

— Anthony Horowitz

240. “Oh, and since the state received a thousand dollars in federal funds for every child taken into custody, it was a nice little earner.”

— Anthony Horowitz

241. “Like many wealthy Americans, he was imbued with a sense of civic responsibility.”

— Anthony Horowitz

242. “But at the same time I recalled something Holmes had said to me many times, namely that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

— Anthony Horowitz

243. “They did not stock any modern, violent crime novels, especially ones that contained bad language.”

— Anthony Horowitz

244. “Bond had always had a loathing of opera; its absurdly large women, its histrionics, its noise. The fact that Larsen was spending his last night there was somehow fitting. He was on his way from one hell to another.”

— Anthony Horowitz

245. “Diana Cowper had enough equipment to cook a Michelin-starred meal for ten but probably went to bed with a boiled egg and two pieces of toast.”

— Anthony Horowitz

246. “On some nights I take a little laudanum and a few months ago Mrs Abernetty recommended pillows stuffed with camel hair. She was absolutely right.”

— Anthony Horowitz

247. “He had known then, not that he had ever doubted it, that even if God existed He preferred not to listen, and all the stars, crosses and crescent moons in the world would not make an iota of difference.”

— Anthony Horowitz

248. “It’s funny but I never quite know what to say when people tell me that they like my books. I almost feel embarrassed. ‘That’s great,’ I muttered. ‘Thank you.”

— Anthony Horowitz

249. “It meant nothing to me. You can stick a piece of metal on a coward and a liar but it won’t change what he is.”

— Anthony Horowitz

250. “But in the space of one minute he had told Colin Matheson more than he had ever told me. I had never known his age, for example. And I had written that he had spent ten years as a detective, not eleven. Why was Hawthorne answering these questions so readily in front of an audience in an Alderney cinema when with me he’d always been so guarded about his private life?”

— Anthony Horowitz