“Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn.”

“Watson is a cheap, efficient little sod of a literary device. Holmes doesn't need him to solve crimes any more than he needs a ten-stone ankle weight. The audience, Arthur. The audience needs Watso...”

“Gray fall light came through the nine square glass panes. On days like this, the strips of white wood that separated the glass seemed brighter to the eye than did the window light.”

“A mystifying sensation of loneliness shook him. Arthur had been alone before, to be sure, but to be alone while surrounded by people, the one sane man in a mad place - that was loneliness.”

“In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, inject...”

“Murder was so trivial in the stories Harold loved. Dead bodies were plot points, puzzles to be reasoned out. They weren't brothers. Plot points didn't leave behind grieving sisters who couldn't fin...”

“It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

“Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove s...”

“He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite....”

“Being a writer all boils down to this: It's you, in a chair, staring at a page. And you're either going to stay in that chair until words are written, or you're going to give up and walk away. The ...”

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

“Im likely to stay here, pen in hand, until dusk comes and my writing melts into the twilight.”

“Im a dot in the grand scheme of things. I dont matter, not even to the other dots.”

“Music is a writer's heartbeat.”

“Gratitude is the gateway to a positive life.”