I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.

There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?

Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.

The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?