Lightning Bug

The older I get, the less everyone seems to know.

"I think something's wrong with me. I make friends, then suddenly I can't bear to be with any of them. That other me, the cheerful and honest one... went away somewhere."

~ Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

ALT

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

~ @neil-gaiman

We had reached Baker Street and had stopped at the door. He was searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said: “Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.”

There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.

“I've heard that voice before,” said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. “Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A Scandal in Bohemia (1891)

“A day's work ruined, Watson,” said he, striding across to the window. “Ha! The stars are out and he wind has fallen. What do you say to a ramble through London?”

I was weary of our little sitting-room and gladly acquiesced. For three hours we strolled about together, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand. His characteristic talk, with its keen observance of detail and subtle power of inference held me amused and enthralled. It was ten o'clock before we reached Baker Street again.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

~ The Adventure of the Resident Patient (1893)

“Your life is not your own,” he said. “Keep your hands off it.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

~ The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger (1927)

“Which is it to-day?” I asked, “morphine or cocaine?”

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

“Which is it to-day?” I asked,—“morphine or cocaine?”

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. “It is cocaine,” he said,—“a seven-per-cent solution.”

“Would you care to try it?” “No, indeed,” I answered, brusquely.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ~ The Sign of Four (1890)

It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed.  

~ JW ~  The Valley Of Fear (1915)

“Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”

~ SH ~ The Adventure of the Naval Treaty (1893)

“My old friend here will tell you that I have an impish habit of practical joking. Also that I can never resist a dramatic situation.”

~ SH ~ The Adventure Of The Mazarin Stone (1921)

Holmes laughed. “Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life,” said he. “Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance.”

~  The Valley Of Fear  (1915)

A flush of colour sprang to Holmes's pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.

~ JW ~ The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (1904)

Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite convinced that the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to depart on that errand under the persuasion that some development of this sort would follow.

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Final Problem (1893)

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the . If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Why is male small talk so terrible?

~ Joe Goldberg