The Manual of Detection

The world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome.

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.

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

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.

I was to be buried inside my own creation, the better to keep its secrets. I will not tell you more, for your sake. But if you ask, I will answer.

What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes. It is taking me now, and I am frightened and alive and very much awake.

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

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

Answer questions with questions. If you are caught in a lie, lie again. You do not need to know the truth to trick another into speaking it. U

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.

A hat is a snake is a lamp is a child is an insect is a clothesline hung with telephones.

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.

The problem is not belonging to one or the other, Mr. Unwin—and there is always an Agency, always a Carnival to belong to. The problem is belonging for too long to either of them.

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 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.

This meeting went on for some time, with only the weather having anything to say, and the weather spoke only of itself.

A blatant falsification, brought to dwell perpetually in the Agency archives, a stain in the shape of words!

Lest details be mistaken for clues, note that Mr. Charles Unwin, lifetime resident of the city, rode his bicycle to work every day, even when it was raining.

Though inconspicuous by nature, as a bicyclist and an umbrellist Unwin was severely evident.

...and in this draft the word "promotion" appeared always between quotation marks, for to let it stand without qualification would be to honor it with too much validity.

An empty hat and raincoat floated at the center of the diagram in Unwin’s mind. Beside them was a dress filled with smoke. A pair of black birds with black hats fluttered above, while below lay two corpses, one in an office chair, one encased in glass. The diagram was a fairy tale, written by a forgetful old man with wild white hair, and it whirled like a record on a phonograph. The

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

Though it isn't a terrible thing, having someone to talk to. Your average underclerk doesn't know a woman from a pile of paper clips.

Counting sheep, in fact, was his surest route to insomnia - by morning he could fill a whole pasture with a vast and clamorous flock.