“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

“It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?”

“You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?""For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.”

“Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see.”

“Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.”

“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”

“I shall never do that,' I answered; 'you have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.”