I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.

I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate.

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

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.

It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods.

A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves