It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Detection Divorce Evidence Infidelity Marriage Pencils Pens Sherlock Holmes Writing

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader.Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.

~ Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Detection Detective Stories Guilt Paradoxes Readership Responsibility Writing

Man has created technology. Technology has created man, what we are today. Electricity is our way of life. Without it many would perish.

~ Unknown

Unknown Detection Earth People Technology World

Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.

~ Criss Jami

Criss Jami Arms Bias Detection Fairness Hypocrisy Independent Intelligence Neutrality Perception Sight Understanding Vision

I sleuth, you know. For a hobby. Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don't you see, which might otherwise strike inward and produce introspection an' suicide. Very natural, healthy pursuit -- not too strenuous, not too sedentary; trains and invigorates the mind.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers Detection Inquisitiveness Intelligence Introspection Lord Peter Wimsey Mental Health Sleuths Suicide

Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!

~ Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Detection Detectives Families Family Life Gentility Hidden Guilt Hidden Shame Mysteries Secrecy Secrets Society Victorian Society

Ionizing smoke detectors unnaturally raise the background radiation levels in the human environment.

~ Steven Magee

Steven Magee Background Detect Detection Detector Environment Environmental Environmental Conservation Environmental Degradation Environmental Protection Environmental Values Environmentalism Human Human Being Human Condition Human Development Humanity Humanity And Society Humans Ion Ionize Ionizing Level Level Of Acceptance Levels Radiation Radiation Effects Radiations Raise Raised Raises Smoke Unnatural Unnaturally

It has often been said that the more unusual the murder the easier it is to solve, but this is a theory I don't believe. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple, and you should think of your investigations as a complicated experiment: look at what remains constant and look at what changes, ask the right questions and don't be afraid of wrong answers, and above all rely on observation and rely on experience.

~ Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd Detection Detective Investigation Murder

Generally he knew by instinct the likely length of an investigation, but on this occasion he did not: as he fought to get his breath he suddenly saw himself as others must see him, and he was struck by the impossibility of his task. The event of the boy's death was not simple because it was not unique and if he traced it backwards, running the time slowly in the opposite direction (but did it have a direction?), it became no clearer. The chain of causality might extend as far back as the boy's birth, in a particular place and on a particular date, or even further into the darkness beyond that. And what of the murderer, for what sequence of events had drawn him to wander by this old church? All these events were random and yet connected, part of a pattern so large that it remained inexplicable. He might, then, have to invent a past from the evidence available - and, in that case, would not the future also be an invention? It was as if he were staring at one of those puzzle drawings in which foreground and background create entirely different images: you could not look at such a thing for long.

~ Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd Detection Detective Murder

To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Analysis Brains Destruction Detection Engines Facts Machines Racing Sherlock Holmes Uselessness

Lockwood gave a sudden exclamation; when I looked at him, his eyes were shining. 'On second thoughts, we can scrap my last suggestion,' he said. 'Stuff the mingling. Who wants to do that? Boring. George - this library. Where is it?

~ Jonathan Stroud

Jonathan Stroud Detection Ghosts Holmesian

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Deception Detection Evidence Facts Obviousness Sherlock Holmes

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Attributes Characteristics Detection Detectives Facts Obviousness Sherlock Holmes

The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Crimes Details Detection Facts Importance Sherlock Holmes Trifles Trivialities

I'm an ambassador for Medical Detection dogs.

~ Lesley Nicol

Lesley Nicol Dogs Ambassador Detection