Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.

Hate doesn't last. Love does.

Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture. Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.

I have always admired the Esquimaux (Eskimos). One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice, and doesn't come back.

Achievement brings with it its own anticlimax.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.