#conan

Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do. ↗

— John Hodgman

#debunking #friendship #harry-houdini #spiritualism #friendship

I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#sherlock-holmes #life

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#sherlock-holmes #the-sign-of-four #materialism

I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#sherlock-holmes #sherlock-holmes

I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#sherlock-holmes #sir-arthur-conan-doyle #the-final-problem #sherlock-holmes

In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius. ↗

— Graham Moore

#holmes #mystery #sherlock #sherlockian #sherlock-holmes