“A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern.”

“There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.”

“The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.”

“I believe that an author who cannot control her characters is, like a mother who cannot control her children, not really fit to look after them.”

“When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios.”

“Albert Campion: 'I’m serious!'Lugg: 'That’s unhealthy in itself.”

“She rose and followed her bust from the room.”