If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well

That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

One does see so much evil in a village,' murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice.

If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.