Agatha Christie Quotes

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

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

That is what I mean. A bath! The receptacle of porcelain, one turns the taps and fills it, one gets in, one gets out and ghoosh - ghoosh - ghoosh, the water goes down the waste pipe!" "M. Poirot are you quite mad?" "No, I am extremely sane.

Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.

It had come about ex­act­ly in the way things hap­pened in books.

"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!"

When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!

There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.

I've got an uncle myself. Nobody should be held responsible for their uncles. Nature's little throwbacks - that's how I look at it.

Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?'

there is evil everywhere under the sun.

The whole thing was like a nine-month ocean voyage to which you never got acclimatized.

The rottenness comes from within.

It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.

It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves.

It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to.

Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

Oh, no, I'm not brave. When a thing is certain, there's nothing to be brave about. All you can do is to find your consolation.

Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's finger and say, "It all began that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident?

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

Use that fluff of yours you call a brain.

I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.

To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure. [author's dedication]

I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.

I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people when they're sorry for themselves. Self-pity is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the world today.

One place is very like another.

Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken

Lie is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn't be, perhaps, but it is. When you're young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn't really important at all. It's young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting. - Jane Marple

Everything has got its right size. When it is its right size and well run it's the tops.

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined---sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured---so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.

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!

Difficulties are made to be overcome ~ Miss Felicity Lemon, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Plymouth Express

Assumptions are dangerous things.

a lot of trouble has been caused by memoirs. Indiscreet revelations, that sort of thing. People who have been close as an oyster all their lives seem positively to relish causing trouble when they themselves shall be comfortably dead.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.

She didn't give George any too easy a time when she was alive. She was one of those semi-invalids – I believe she had really something wrong with her, but whatever it was she played it for all it was worth. She was capricious, exacting, unreasonable. She complained from morning to night. George was expected to wait on her, hand and foot and everything he did was always wrong and he got cursed for it. Most men, I'm fully convinced, would have hit her with a hatchet long ago.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm, but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack - not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She though always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.

If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life.

I've a theory that one can always get anything one wants if one will pay the price. And do you know what the price is, nine times out of ten? Compromise.

Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot

... evil was, perhaps, necessarily always more impressive than good.

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