"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed thems…"

"It was a dark and stormy night."

"I have been a good boy, and I have been a bad boy, and I have been a boy who thought he was a good boy, and I have been a boy who knew he was a bad boy."

"I am a man who has always been very much in the habit of doing what he likes, and of not doing what he doesn't like."

"The universe makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid."