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1 " I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew): Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. (RUDYARD KIPLING) "
― Colin Dexter , The Secret of Annexe 3 (Inspector Morse, #7)
2 " Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. "It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body - a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body. "
― Colin Dexter , Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse, #2)
3 " Sometimes procedures worked well; and sometimes (as now) there was every reason for the police to be congratulated on the way situations were handled. On this occasion one thing only (perhaps two?) had marred police professionalism. "
― Colin Dexter , The Daughters of Cain (Inspector Morse, #11)
4 " He sighed and knew that life was full of ‘if only’ for everyone "
― Colin Dexter , The Dead of Jericho (Inspector Morse, #5)
5 " It had been at the height of the summer heat-wave of 1995. One day when she had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially tolerate, she had seen in Strange’s eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?) were the signs of some mild, erotic fantasy.‘You look very desirable, my girl!’That’s all he said. Was that what people meant by ‘sexual harassment "
― Colin Dexter , The Remorseful Day (Inspector Morse, #13)
6 " Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs."You still sex-mad, I see, Morse," said the surgeon."I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max." Morse turned over a page. "And you don't improve much either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died. "
7 " He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway. "
― Colin Dexter , Last Bus to Woodstock (Inspector Morse, #1)
8 " Phobias were common enough. Some people suffee from arachnophobia, or hysphobia, or myophobia, or pterophobia... Well-nigh everyone suffers occasionally from thanatophobia; many from necrophobia — although Morse was not really afraid of dead bodies at all, or so he told himself. "
9 " Nothing quite like it in the whole history of music," announced Morse magisterially, after Brünnhilde had ridden into the flames and the waves of the Rhine had finally rippled into silence."You think so?""Don't you?""I prefer Elizabethan madrigals, really."For a few moments Morse said nothing, saddened by her lack of sensitivity, it seemed. "
― Colin Dexter , The Way Through The Woods (Inspector Morse, #10)
10 " Maximum mental energy' had never been Kevin's strong point. "
11 " Morse, he knew, had the maddeningly brilliant facility for seeing his way through the dark labyrinths of human motive and human behaviour... "
― Colin Dexter , Service of All the Dead (Inspector Morse, #4)
12 " He was somewhat of a loner by temperament--because though never wholly happy when alone, he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people. "
― Colin Dexter , The Wench is Dead (Inspector Morse, #8)
13 " I always drink at lunchtime. It helps my imagination. "
14 " There's always time for one more pint. - Chief Inspector Morse "
― Colin Dexter , The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (Inspector Morse #3)
15 " It is strange to relate (for a man in his profession) that in addition to incurable acrophobia, arachnophobia, myophobia, and ornithophobia, Morse also suffered from necrophobia; and had he known what awaited him now, it is doubtful whether he would have dared to view the horridly disfigured corpse at all. "
― Colin Dexter , The Riddle of the Third Mile (Inspector Morse #6)
16 " Wives invariably flourish when deserted; it is the deserting male who often ends in disaster. (William McFee) "
― Colin Dexter , Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories
17 " This was exactly why holidays were so valuable, he told himself: they allowed you to stand back a bit, and see where you were going rusty. "
18 " During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance. "
19 " Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them (Frank Moore Colby) "
― Colin Dexter , The Jewel That Was Ours (Inspector Morse, #9)
20 " ...though I am still...exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours. "
