“The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.”

His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

A dog reflects the family life.

Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.

Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.

Books have been thought of as windows to another world of imagination.

My notebook couldn’t carry the burden of all those words which my heart once felt.

I’m in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and all other writers defending heresy or schism or in any attacking the foundations of religion, are altogether prohibited.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Doing it your own way, not having to go exactly by the book to be successful.

I feel like I got a whole lot of living to do before I think about summing it up in a book.