Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

I think like a detective.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts 'Sign.'

We're all amateur investigators. We scan bookshelves, we ogle trinkets left out in the open, we calculate the cost of furniture and study the photographs on display; sometimes we even check out the medicine cabinet.

Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.

I'll always do 'Sherlock' - it's something I'm not going to give up on.

I'm not a great student, so I don't know that I would have been a great detective. Part of my brain sort of works that way, like wanting to figure out puzzles and figure out what happened and why people do the things they do and who they are and how it happened.

Midsomer' is a throwback to the old detective tradition, in which everything happens in the head of one man. Everything depends on his intuition and experience.

I could imagine actually being a scientist or a detective, but not a detective who puts his hands into gory, bloody things. But more like someone who figures things out. I like to figure things out.

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

Poirot said placidly, “One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!

You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

I've always felt if you followed a real private detective around, it would be boring.

That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.

'Research,' for me, is a big word that encompasses a lot of different activities, all of them based around curiosity. Research is traveling to places, or studying snowflakes with a magnifying glass, or excavating one's memories. Research is walking around Hamburg with a notebook.

I've always wanted to play a detective. Always loved detective shows, right back to 'Columbo', 'The Rockford Files', 'Starsky & Hutch'.

I'm very good at solving mysteries.

'Unforgotten' was a bit of a no-brainer. I'm a big fan of crime dramas, but often the 'investigation' part goes much too smoothly - and you don't get that with this.

I think there's part of me that's longing to play a Sherlock Holmes or sort of a House character, like a real detective. Like a real, moody detective. Like a real, sarcastic, mentally ill detective. I think it would be really fun to do something like that.

I developed 'Trapped' because I was fascinated with the idea of a terrible crime in a small town cut off from the rest of the world.

I think the process is one of using the camera and sound in the way a detective uses a magnifying glass: to find the clues. They're discovery devices, not performance devices - you're watching things the way a cat does. You're not judging. You're there to witness something.

I always thought if I wasn't an actor, I might make quite a good detective - mainly because I'm nosey.

It is quite a three-pipe problem.