The Manual of Detection Quotes

“The world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“Woe to he who checkmates his opponents at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“A train will bring you back to the place you came from, but it will not return you home.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“She was beautiful, in the quiet way that lonely, unnoticed people are beautiful to those who notice them”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“This meeting went on for some time, with only the weather having anything to say, and the weather spoke only of itself.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“A hat is a snake is a lamp is a child is an insect is a clothesline hung with telephones.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“He was the only person awake, but he might as well have been alone and dreaming.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“His mind lingered for a time in the hinterlands of sleep, words drifting over the border as though on a warm wind, unfastened from their meanings.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“At home he went about in his socks. That way he could avoid disturbing the neighbors and also indulge in the occasional shoeless swoop across the room, as when one is preparing a breakfast of oatmeal and the oatmeal wants raisins and brown sugar, which are in the cupboard at the other end of the room. To glide with sock-swaddled feet over a world of glossy planes: that would be a wondrous thing! But Unwin’s apartment was smallish at best, and the world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“There is no better way to understand your own motives and dispositions than by finding someone to act as your opposite.       T”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“Though inconspicuous by nature, as a bicyclist and an umbrellist Unwin was severely evident.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“Unwin was tired, too. He had worn himself down—to nothing, nearly—with his cuts and corrections, his erasures and emendations. He was awake now, but was there still time for him? His mind had wearied of its appointed rounds, of the stream of typescript and transcript, and now he wondered what might have been different, what might still be different, if only the day would hold and not abandon him to sleep.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“Greenwood wasn’t happy to see me. And I saw a look on her face, one I’d never seen there before. I think it was surprise, but we might need a new name for it, just because it was hers.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“To the modern detective, truth is rarely its own reward; usually it is its own punishment. And if you cannot track mystery to the back of its ugly cave, then be content to stand at the edge of the dark and call it by name.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“[On Corpses] Many cases begin with one - this can be disconcerting, but at least you know where you sand. Worse is he corpse that appears partway into your investigation, complicating everything. Best to proceed, therefore, with the vigilance of one who assumes that a corpse is always around the next corner. That way it is less likely to be your own.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“...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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“Counting sheep, in fact, was his surest route to insomnia - by morning he could fill a whole pasture with a vast and clamorous flock.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

“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.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection