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 human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.

I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea.

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.

To put it quite crudely ... the poor don't really know how the rich live, and the rich don't know how the poor live, and to find out is really enchanting to both of them.

I know nothing about pistols and revolvers, which is why I usually kill off my characters with a blunt instrument or better with poisons. Besides, poisons are neat and clean and really exciting... I do not think I could look a really ghastly mangled body in the face. It is the means that I am interested in. I do not usually describe the end, which is often a corpse.

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.