Professor Moriarty Quotes

“Moriarty smiled his adder’s smile.

And I relaxed. I knew. My destiny and his wound together. It was a sensation I’d never got before upon meeting a man. When I’d had it from women, the upshot ranged from disappointment to attempted murder. Understand me, Professor James Moriarty was a hateful man, the most hateful, hateable, creature I have ever known, not excluding Sir Augustus and Kali’s Kitten and the Abominable Bloody Snow-Bastard and the Reverend Henry James Prince. He was something man-shaped that had crawled out from under a rock and moved into the manor house. But, at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“Dullards would have you believe that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth... but to a mathematical mind, the impossible is simply a theorem yet to be solved. We must not eliminate the impossible, we must conquer it, suborn it to our purpose.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“He left the room, and closeted himself in the dark, buzzing space where he raised his wasps and plotted the courses of heavenly bodies.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“Moriarty rarely smiled,and then usually to terrify some poor victim. The first time I heard him laugh, I thought he had been struck by a deadly poison and the stutter escaping through his locked jaws was a death rattle.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“How did your parents come to be "lost at sea", Moriarty?'

The professor paused, and said, 'Mysteriously, Moran.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“No crime too small’ was never exactly Moriarty’s slogan, but the criminal genius would apply himself to minor offences if an unusual challenge was presented.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“Somehow, the notion that Professor Moriarty had parents - might have been a child - never sat right. A viper is a snake straight from the egg. I couldn't help but picture little Jamie as a balding midget in a sailor suit, spying Cook and the baker's boy rolling in the flour on the kitchen table through his toy telescope, and blackmailing them for extra buns.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“This is the moral, Oh My Best Beloved: never kill anyone for a 'Cause'.
For why not, Uncle Basher?
Because causes don't pay, Little Friend of all the World. Adherents expect you to kill just for the righteousness of it. They don't want to pay you! They don't understand why you want paying!”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“He stroked Tibbles, who was starting to leak and make nasty little noises.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“Only an idiot guesses or reasons or deduces,’ the Professor said, patiently.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“Mad' sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in 'em that you put there. 'Mad' is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner of lunacy as you're turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest 'scrape' was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“The Firm would go to war! Not soon enough, said I. For I wasn’t content to be content, to grow plump and pampered in a London rut – no matter how many blushing twins were thrown into the pot – when there were savage lands to be conquered, and desperate campaigns to be waged. The hunter’s blood stirred and would not be quieted. View halloo, and into the fray... Then,”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

“In a battle which might interest scholars of modern urban warfare, the Conduit Street Comanche whipped the tar out of an irregular band of crybaby destitutes who pledged allegiance to the Watson’s departed mucker-wallah.”
― Kim Newman, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles