Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things.

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.

You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash.

In the midst of life, we are in death.

There's no agony like [getting started]. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off.

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.