the detective's highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favours under the guise of conferring them!

In my end is my beginning - that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean?

Exactly! It is absurd - improbable - it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts.

One must make one's own mistakes

The saddest thing in life and the hardest to live through, is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering.

If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid.

I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling.