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?

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

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a fully functioning sociopath. Do your research.

Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.