Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. — Joseph Conrad

I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze sheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable and defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a splendour unmarred by death.

For it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.