It's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brain to crime it is the worst of all.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

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?

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

Streams may spring from one source, and yet some be clear and some be foul.

Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.

Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.