If only-if only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your moustache. If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache-a thing of beauty such as mine.

It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to.

Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time thewish to kill-though not the will to kill.

I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But-incongruous as it may seem to some-I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.

how tedious is retirement! You cannot imagine to yourself the monotony with which day comes after day.