Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot

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.

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings

Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

Poirot said placidly, “One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions.