"Who once wrote: Pardon the length of this letter. I didn't have time to write a short one."?"
Sherlock Holmes, in the Laurie King novel "A Letter Of Mary" (I'm not that I'm that retentive, it just happens that I just finished it) In the context of the book, Richard Bridge's reply is pretty much irrelevant; Holmes was writting "on the run" as things developed, and didn't have time to sit back, reflect, and "boil down" the information he wanted to convey.