To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

we dislike those we've injured.

Ten thousand years of civilization shed in an instant when you put a woman behind the wheel of a car.

We don't say a man's ill if he's crazy about sex, if he can't get enough sex. Why should a woman be different?

the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.

We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.

To be a classic, a novel should be original.