9 Favorite quotes from Criminal Minds

I often wonder if the writers pick the quotes before writing the show, or if the quotes are chosen after writing the show. I know when I was researching Dante Alighieri for Eternal Beauty it worked both ways. Sometimes the scenes were inspired by the quotes and other times I found quotes that perfectly matched the scenes I had written. I'm often amazed that a quote and words can capture the true essence of darkness, torture and pain. We truly never know what hides behind a smile.

Season 1

Gideon - "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." Joseph Conrad


Season 2

Gideon - "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it." Mark Twain

Season 3

Hotchner - Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Season 4

Hotchner - "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France

Season 5

Garcia - "Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theater of the tragedy of man." John Morley

Season 6

Prentiss - "There's no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determine soul." Ella Wheeler Wilcox


Season 7

Hotchner - "You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough." Frank Crane

Season 8

“Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.” Ralph Steadman

Season 9

Morgan - Beware the fury of a patient man - John Dryden.