Anthony Horowitz

The world was healing itself.

Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.

Was it fate? Was it destiny?""I think it was Alan Blunt.

There's a name for people with an interest in the moon," Alex said. "They're called lunatics.

It was quite elementary,' returned the detective with a languid gesture of one hand.

You look at me as if I were a conjuror,' Holmes remarked, with a laugh.

I don't know anything!' Tim(Caleb) wailed.He'd never spoken a truer word in his life.

As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.

Nice day for a funeral.

I think my reputation will look after itself," Holmes said. "If they hang me, Watson, I shall leave it to you to persuade your readers that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

I had chosen to play the detective__nd if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I've ever read about, it's their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn't actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn't trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It's a relationship based entirely on deception and it's one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him.

I don't know what I'd do without you. There's no one else to look after me. And it's not just that. I sometimes think you're the only person who really knows me. I only feel normal when I'm with you.

Sometimes it's the tiniest things that can mean the difference between life and death.

But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school.That's why they become politicians.

When you are in his sort of business - now my business - you are not defined by who you are but who you are not.

Looking back now, I would say that this was one of the first valuable lessons I learned, and one that would be useful in my future line of work. Sometimes things go wrong. It is inevitable. But it is a mistake to waste time and energy worrying about events that you cannot influence. Once they have happened, let them go.

All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away, how can you hope to see?

Much later that night, I thought the door opened and a man came into the bedroom. He was leaning on a stick. He didn't say anything but he stood there, looking sadly at Andreas and me, and as a shaft of moonlight came slanting in through the window, I recognized Atticus Pünd. I was asleep, of course, and dreaming, but I remember wondering how he had managed to enter my world before the thought occurred to me that maybe it was I who had entered his.