To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind ... and leads later to the interpretation of experience; to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

How true it is that men live for Things and women for People!

Why? Oh, well - I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know.

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.

make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

all conscious thought is a process in time; so that to think consciously about Time is like trying to use a foot-rule to measure its own length.

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.