Agatha Christie

"Miss Marple twinkled at me."

"Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird - struggling to escape. You'll never escape now..."

"Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live."

"You know that in all tombs there is always a false door?" Renisenb stared. "Yes, of course." "Well, people are like that too. They create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is a bare rock … And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself."

"It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid," said Esa. "Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them."

"Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen."

"Fear is incomplete knowledge."

"The rottenness comes from within."

"Let us think only of the good days that are to come."

"It's as easy to utter lies as truth."

"Men are made fools by the gleaming limbs of women, and, lo, in a minute they are become discolored carnelians. A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream. And death comes as the end."

"Proof must be solid break walls of facts."

"Handsome, strong, gay ... She felt again the thro and lilt of her blood. She had loved Kameni in that moment. She loved him now. Kameni could take the place that Khay had held in her life. She thought: "We shall be happy together - yes, we shall be happy. We shall live together and take pleasure in each other and we shall have strong, handsome children. There will be busy days full of work … and days of pleasure when we sail on the River...Life will be again as I knew it with Khay...What could I ask more than that? What do I want more than that?""

"When you were a child, I loved you. I loved your grave face and the confidence with which you came to me, asking me to mend your broken toys. And then, after eight years' absence, you came again and sat here, and brought me the thoughts that were in your mind. And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas - seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision..."

"She broke off, unable to find words to frame her struggling thoughts. What life would be with Hori, she did not know. In spite of his gentleness, in spite of his love for her, he would remain in some respects incalculable and incomprehensible. They would share moments of great beauty and richness together - but what of their common daily life?"

""I have made my choice, Hori. I will share my life with you for good or evil, until death comes..." With his arms round her, with the sudden new sweetness of his face against hers, she was filled with an exultant richness of living."

"I must have a talk with you, David, and learn all the new ideas. As far as I can see, one must hate everybody but at the same time give them free medical attention and a lot of extra education, poor things! All those helpless little children herded into schoolhouses every day — and cod liver oil forced down babies' throats whether they like it or not — such nasty-smelling stuff."

"John, forgive me... for what I can't help doing."

"And if you cast down an idol, there's nothing left."

"I think perhaps it wasn't a good idea to read aloud Gibbon to me in the evenings, because if it's nice and hot by the fire, there's something about Gibbon that does, rather, make you go to sleep."

"It's so messy bleeding like a pig."

"He could have shot her from behind a hedge in the good old Irish fashion and probably got away with it."

"“I am not very clever about Americanisms — and I understand they change very quickly.”"

"Perhaps a little of Trollope, but not to drown in him."

"“I always feel that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they’ve whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.”"

"“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game."

"Weak and kindly people are often very treacherous. And if they’ve got a grudge against life it saps the little moral strength that they may possess."

"One forgets how human murderers are."

"It all came together then, you see — all the various isolated bits — and made a coherent pattern."

"What any woman saw in some particular man was beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent male. It just was so. A woman who could be intelligent about everything else in the world could be a complete fool when it came to some particular man."

"Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb."

"There were to be no short cuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away..."

"How averse human beings were ever to admit ignorance!"

"Men always tell such silly lies."

"It shows you, Madame, the dangers of conversation. It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever, sooner or later they will give themselves away."

"The tear rose in Miss Marple's eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger - anger against a heartless killer. And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of triumph - the triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully reconstructed an extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of teeth."

"“A dog,” said Mr. Baldock, in his lecture-room style, which was capable of rousing almost anybody to violent irritation, “has an extraordinary power of bolstering up the human ego.”"

"“Here are my roses. Like ’em?” “They’re beautiful,” said Laura politely. “On the whole,” said Mr. Baldock, “I prefer them to human beings. They don’t last as long for one thing.”"

"Children and one's social inferiors never know when to say good-bye. One has to say it for them."

"They have, all of them, such wonderful good manners. Not taught good manners — the natural thing. I could never have believed till I came here that natural courtesy could be such a wonderful — such a positive thing."

"I can imagine anything! That's the trouble with me. I can imagine things now — this minute. I could even make them sound all right, but of course none of them would be true."

"It would be difficult Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons."

"What else will you have? Nice banana and bacon sandwich?"

"How convenient if you could ring up Harrods and say ‘Please send along two good murderers, will you?’"

"What beats me — it always does — is how a man can be so clever and yet be such a perfect fool."

"I have a certain experience of the way people tell lies."

""Well", said Miss Marple. "Are you going to let her get away with it?" There was a pause, then Father brought down his fist with a crash on the table. "No", he roared — "No, by God I'm not!" Miss Marple nodded her head slowly and gravely. "May God have mercy on her soul," she said."

"The reason he liked attending rich patients rather than poor ones was the he could exercise his active imagination in prescribing for their ailments."

"She came in with coffee and biscuits at half-past eleven with her mouth pursed up very prunes and prisms, and would hardly speak to me."

"“Aha? You have been very clever, madame.” “No, I haven’t really. It was a pure accident. I mean, I walked into a small café place and there the girl was, just sitting there.” “Ah. You had the good fortune then. That is just as important.”"