Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?

To keep something wild is far more difficult than to preserve it.

You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

... obsessions are always dangerous.

Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.

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.

Fey...a Scotch word...It means the kind of exalted happiness that comes before disaster. You know--it's too good to be true.