Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.

Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.

And where the deepest current crawls/ Like thistledown the dainty fly falls./ Then from the depths a silver gleam/ Quick flashes, like a jewel bright./ Up through the waters of the stream/ An instant visible to sight/ As lightning cleaves to sombre sky/ A rainbow rises to the fly.

I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.

He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.

I wondered whether the scientific modern brain could not get to the stage of realising that Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.