You want beauty,' said Hercules Poirot. 'Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth. I want always truth.

At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.

I've got a stomach now as well as a behind. And I mean - well, you can't pull it in both ways, can you? ... I've made it a rule to pull in my stomach and let my behind look after itself.

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.

It's no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius- some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas, but you must submit them to the discipline of form.

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. [Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]