"I will periodically send my assassins to kill random conspiracy nuts in suspicious-looking ways. There is little danger that they will find out about my plans and no one would have believed them anyway, but the heroes will be convinced that they were killed for what they knew and will get so wrapped up in trying to foil my diabolical plan to give all trees epilepsy that my real plans will go unchallenged. Plus it gives my assassins something to do."
— TVTropes Additional Evil Overlord Vow #84 Cell Block E (see also sub-vows A - D)
"It's not the crime that kills you, it's the cover-up."
No false pattern can be created to cover a crime without bearing upon it some trace of its creator. It is better, then, to seek in events some pattern that already exists and then adjust your actions to it.
"Many take it for granted that if there was an assassination conspiracy, Jack Ruby must have been involved. In fact, many people believe there was a conspiracy precisely because of Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, which had the effect — intentional or otherwise — of silencing the accused assassin.
"But whether there was a conspiracy or not, there is no reason to assume that Ruby must have been involved. In fact, logic tells us that no conspiracy could profit by silencing Oswald in such a public fashion: What's the point of eliminating one suspect while simultaneously handing the police another?"
Vrin: The chapel fire will ensure —
Tarvek: That the Baron's quester examines it with a fine tooth comb! No — I don't think so!
"He killed Mark Sattenstein to keep him quiet, and he killed Greg Stillman to close down my investigation. He didn't have to do all that, I'd done all I'd signed on to do, but every time he stirred the pot something new floated up and got me into it all over again."
— A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block
"My original mistakes never draw half the attention as my attempts to cover them up do."
"Brian Deer didn't stop there; [Andrew] Wakefield was trying to sue him to get him to stop digging, and guess what? One of the first rules of investigative reporting is that if they try and sue you for finding things out, you're probably on to something."
— H.Bomberguy, discussing the investigation into Andrew Wakefield's discredited medical study suggesting a link between MMR vaccines and autism
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
— Tyrion Lannister, A Song of Ice and Fire
"If your witnesses keep turning up dead, there's probably something there."
— Wendigoon, "The Boys on the Tracks & a 35 Year Cover-up"
"Listen. This isn't how you keep a secret. The way you do that is to pretend you don't have one, not make a big hairy thing out of yourself and go around yelling 'I've got a secret and I won't tell you what it is, so you'd better not ask—or else!' Come on, Lieutenant Colonel. You're a big boy. Am I right or am I wrong?"
— Major Samuel Yeager, Second Contact, Worldwar
"In L.A., sometimes this happens, you'll go into a restaurant, and there's somebody dressed like … too many layers of clothing, a hood, a hat, like hunched over, and you know that's an actor trying not to look famous. Sometimes the disguise gives you away more than just like walking around being normal[.]"
