I have abstained from expressing any opinion, so far," says Mr. Superintendent, with his military voice still in good working order. "I have now only one remark to offer, on leaving this case in your hands. There IS such a thing, Sergeant, as making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Good-morning."" There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a mole-hill, in consequence of your head being too high to see it." Having returned his brother-officer's compliment in those terms, Sergeant Cuff wheeled about, and walked away to the window by himself.

— Wilkie Collins

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

— Wilkie Collins

I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is - the enormous prosperity of Fools.

— Wilkie Collins

I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.

— Wilkie Collins

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.

— Wilkie Collins

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

— Wilkie Collins

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.

— Wilkie Collins

I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again—why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman’s before—why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman in my life?

— Wilkie Collins

I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.

— Wilkie Collins

Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career?

— Wilkie Collins