Jedediah Berry

“On Memory: Imagine a desk covered with papers. That is everything you are thinking about. Now imagine a stack of file drawers behind it. That is everything you know. The trick is to keep the desk and the file drawers as close to one another as possible, and the papers neatly stacked.”

“He was the only person awake, but he might as well have been alone and dreaming.”

“A train will bring you back to the place you came from, but it will not return you home.”

“All the world's a rube, and he who tries to prove otherwise will be the first to wake onstage, victim of our just ridicule.”

“There is no better way to understand your own motives and dispositions than by finding someone to act as your opposite.”

“She was beautiful, in the quiet way that lonely, unnoticed people are beautiful to those who notice them.”

“The expert detective’s pursuit will go unnoticed, but not because he is unremarkable. Rather, like the suspect’s shadow, he will appear as though he is meant to be there.”

“It is not enough to say that you have had a hunch. Once written down, most such inklings reveal themselves for what they are: something to be tossed into a wishing well, not into a file.”

“The coded message is a lifeless thing, mummified and entombed. To the would-be cryptologist we must offer the same advice we would give the grave-robber, the spelunker, and the sorcerer of legend: beware what you dig up; it is yours.”

“If you are not setting a trap, then you are probably walking into one. It is the mark of the master to do both at once.”

“Woe to he who checkmates his opponents at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage.”

“The world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome.”

“Love is the same as being lost,' says Jacques to the dark. 'Except you don't care that you're lost.”