Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]

One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

To count - really and truly to count - a woman must have goodness or brains.

There's no agony like [getting started]. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off.

What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.