Agatha Christie Quotes

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.

When the fact doesn't meet the theory then let go the theory.

Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

If you've had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you.

There are many things that are unbelievable. Especially before breakfast, is it not? That is what one of your classics says. Six impossible things before breakfast.

Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.

The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.

I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary.

Hate doesn't last. Love does.

It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot

You can only really get under anybody's skin if you are married to them.

What good is money if it can't buy happiness?

Be sure thy sin will find thee out.

They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.

The things young women read nowadays and profess to enjoy positively frighten me.

The out-of-date returns in due course as the picturesque.

It's very inconvenient to be loved. Nearly everyone has found that out, sooner or later. The fewer people who love you the less you will have to suffer.

It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.

Money ... is always the great clue to what is happening in the world.

Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

how tedious is retirement! You cannot imagine to yourself the monotony with which day comes after day.

Love is not everything ... It is only when we are young that we think it is.

The past is the father of the present.

Coffee in England always tastes like a chemistry experiment.

You're shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this - they always think the worst!

Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts. -"The Blood-Stained Pavement

Doctors can do almost anything nowadays, can't they, unless they kill you while they're trying to cure you.

A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves

There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.

The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.

You travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing ... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.

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.

Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.

Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence?

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.

Surfing is like that. You are either vigorously cursing or else you are idiotically pleased with yourself.

Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair of causes. It is much more-how shall I say?-fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one's love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting...that the loved one will turn to someone else.

There is no question of defence. I have always acted in accordance with the dictates of my conscience. I have nothing with which to reproach myself.

I always take abroad with me one really good soft pillow--to me it makes all the difference between comfort and misery.

And, of course, afterwards -- one always hears these things afterwards, so much better if one heard them before -- we found out that dozens of empty brandy bottles were taken out of the house every week!

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.