Graham Moore > Quotes

“Arthur had never challenged a man to a duel, but in this moment he understood the magnificent reasonableness of the tradition. It was either that or slugging him outright this very second, which didn't seem nearly so gentlemanly.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“The bar was crowded with theorizing Sherlockians, who in the absence of any actual evidence had created grand machinations to explain the crime. Minor points of canonical disagreement became reasons for brutal murder. Some tried to piece together their theories in small groups, hoping that with enough brainpower and expertise they might arrive at a solution. Others jumped straight over the “investigation” phase and landed square at the end of the story they were creating, instantly accusing the man across the table of some vile treachery. And, moreover, actually employing phrases like “vile treachery” in doing so. Everyone was a suspect. But at the world’s largest Sherlockian gathering, everyone was a detective as well.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“Love grew docile with age, like a faithful hound. It became precious and prized, locked away from the world like a jewelry box. Love grew commendable dependable-love was eggs, love was ham, love was the morning paper.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“In courtrooms all across this city, Maya had seen people get verdicts they’d wanted, and she’d seen just as many get ones they didn’t. But the verdicts had nothing to do with truth. No verdict ever changed a person’s opinion. Juries weren’t gods. The people who went into those courtrooms looking for divine revelation came out bearing the fruits of bureaucratic negotiation. Maya wanted to tell Lou that this need for vindication had become the mire of their whole petty country. Every day, they woke up fervently hoping for the headline that would prove, definitively, that their guys were the virtuous ones and the other guys were the absolute worst. But news of that certainty would forever elude them. Every new revelation that seemed to damn the people with whom they disagreed would be followed by a new rationalization. For every failed prediction, there would come a mitigating circumstance. They would double down on their most weakly held convictions because the alternative felt unbearable, and the bums across the aisle would follow suit. She wanted to say that the only thing worse than being wrong was having a bottomless need to prove that you never were. But she didn’t tell Lou any of that. Instead, Maya told Lou what he wanted to hear. She did it because she was the last person on earth who should be instructing Lou Silver on how to live out his days. And she did it because he’d asked her an honest question, and he deserved to hear from her an honest answer. “Mr. Silver,” she said, running her fingers through her hair, “I’m not sure of much of anything anymore.”
― Graham Moore, The Holdout

“Knowing the difference between right and wrong sometimes did not serve to clarify much of anything. Just because a man is able to draw his line in the sand, it doesn’t mean he’ll know what to do when his only course of action requires crossing it.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Sometimes I hate it so much,” she said. “Always having to pretend.” Paul gripped her fingers tighter. “This is America,” he said. “We’re all pretending.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“A mystifying sensation of loneliness shook him. Arthur had been alone before, to be sure, but to be alone while surrounded by people, the one sane man in a mad place - that was loneliness.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“Arthur narrowly avoided tripping over his own skirt as he hurried out of the ladies’ powder room in full pursuit.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear moral conclusion would be unavoidable.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Harold had become, over the past week, a connoisseur of silences. He was an expert at differentiating the particulars; was this a Tranquil Silence, marked by slow sighs and peaceful smiles? Or was it a Tired Silence, marked by ornery chair shifting? Or a Tense Silence, full of tight breaths and cautious glances?”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“[In any] machine, the failure of one part to cooperate properly with the other part disorganizes the whole and renders it inoperative for the purpose intended. —THOMAS EDISON R”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Let’s be honest— I think one of you people did this. I think one of your giddy, delusional pals killed Cale and stole my diary. Probably for some obsessive, arcane, and pointless reason. The twisted tosser is most likely building a shrine to the thing right now, praying to it like a dusty Ganesha. I’m going to need someone who is—how shall I put this?–similarly disposed in order to get the diary back.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“The United States was of an anti-intellectual bent. And yet the two most technologically advanced laboratories in the world, as far as Paul could tell, were no longer in Paris’s Louvre or London’s Burlington House. They were now in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were operated by two self-made men with no formal training at all.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Picasso had a saying—“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. —Steve Jobs, misattributing a quote to Pablo Picasso”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“What she missed the most about the person she'd been, Maya realized, was her hope for a coming world that turned out never to have been possible. She was nostalgic for an imaginary future.”
― Graham Moore, The Holdout

“The immolation occurred late on a Friday morning. The lunchtime bustle was picking up as Paul descended from his office building onto the crowded street. He cut an imposing figure against the flow of pedestrians: six feet four inches, broad shouldered, clean-shaven, clothed in the matching black coat, vest, and long tie that was to be expected of New York’s young professional men. His hair, perfectly parted on the left, had just begun to recede into a gentle widow’s peak. He looked older than his twenty-six years. As”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“-Acho que adoro a ideia de os problemas terem soluções. Acho que é esse o atrativo das histórias de mistério, sejam de Holmes ou de qualquer outro. Nessas histórias vivemos num mundo compreensível. Vivemos num local onde para cada problema há uma solução, e, se formos suficientemente inteligentes, conseguimos resolve-los.
-Em oposição a...?
-Em oposição a um mundo aleatório. Onde a violência e a morte são acontecimentos fortuitos...imprevisíveis e imparáveis...”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“Westinghouse was responsible for tremendous feats of manufacturing—extremely well-built devices made by a factory of hundreds, each one supplying a part. A chain of construction. Edison, on the other hand, had built himself a factory that did not produce machines, but rather ideas.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Arthur looked deeply into the boy’s clear blue eyes and scanned the contours of his handsome face. Arthur could hear something, faintly, in the distance. A rushing sound. A crash of water against rock. He wasn’t sure if it was real or not, but he heard it all the same. Torrents of water rushing over a cliff. He tuned his ears to the noise and recognized the tone. He steadied his hand and listened to the sound, from the back of his mind, of the Reichenbach Falls.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“But this is the very thing about electricity. Nothing about it makes any common sense at all.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“He's just a man," said Paul. "No matter what The Sun says about him."
"He makes miracles. Lightning in a glass bottle. Voices in a copper wire. What kind of a man can do that?"
"A rich one.)”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“A vice is a thing which may be applauded in moderation but becomes horrific in overuse.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“What an imprecise science was medicine. It was more an art than was fiction.”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“Women now seek to involve themselves in the life of their government because their government has involved itself in their lives!”
― Graham Moore, The Sherlockian

“would first meet Thomas Edison, Paul watched a man burn”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Some writing one had to do in the dark.”
― Graham Moore

“It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. T. Edison

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. T. Edison

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. Buckminster Fuller

Be alone: that is the secret of invention. Be alone: that is when ideas are born. N.Tesla

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. Steve Jobs

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you, because bad news is a headline and gradual improvement is now. Bill Gates

If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. Steve Jobs

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. A.G.Bell

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. B. Franklin

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. A.Einstein

That's been one of my mantras: focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But is's worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains. Steve Jobs

We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. T. Edison

Let's go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday. Steve Jobs”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“General Electric.' It has a rather nice ring to it, doesn't it?”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Inept lying was almost as good as honesty.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Art is a social object, books and films and records and television shows, they’re social objects that bring people together in conversation. I love the notion that I could write something that two people could share. That’s the goal.”
― Graham Moore