you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.

Every great man has a woman behind him ... And every great woman has some man or other in front of her, tripping her up.

Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?" "So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.

I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.

The Devil ... is much better served by exploiting our virtues than by appealing to our lower passions; consequently, it is when the Devil looks most noble and reasonable that he is most dangerous.

Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject.

If people will bring dynamite into a powder factory, they must expect explosions.