Agatha Christie

"The old, you must remember, though considered incapable of action, have nevertheless a good fund of experience on which to draw."

"It merely confirmed in him his long-held belief that you should never believe anything anyone said without first checking it. Suspect everybody, had been for many years, if not his whole life, one of his first axioms."

"Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkable rapidity, and Mrs. Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particular intuition which turned out to be right!"

"It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation."

"“Well, what are you doing? What have you done?” “I am sitting in this char,” said Poirot. “Thinking,” he added. “Is that all?” said Mrs. Oliver. “It is the important thing,” said Poirot."

"“Tout de même,” said Poirot, “since I cannot find anything, eh bien, then the logic falls out of the window.”"

"In my end is my beginning — that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean? And just where does my story begin? I must try and think..."

"Without interest (hers not the type to wonder why!) but with perfect efficiently, Miss Lemon had fulfilled her task."

"Take this Hercules — this hero! Hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!"

"“I — I don’t regret what I did. I think that you are a kind man, Mr. Poirot, and that possibly you might understand. You see, I’ve been so terribly afraid.” “Afraid?” “Yes, it’s difficult for a gentleman to understand, I expect. But you see, I’m not a clever woman at all, and I’ve no training and I’m getting older — and I’m so terrified for the future. I’ve not been able to save anything — how could I with Emily to be cared for? — and as I get older and more incompetent there won’t be any one who wants me. They’ll want somebody young and brisk. I’ve — I’ve known so many people like I am — nobody wants you and you live in a one room and you can’t have a fire or any warmth and not very much to eat and at last you can’t even pay the rent on your room … There are Institutions, of course, but it’s not very easy to get into them unless you have influential friends, and I haven’t. There are a good many others situated like I am — poor companions — untrained useless women with nothing to look forward to but a deadly fear…”"

"Even the sensible and the competent have been given tongues by le bon Dieu — and they do not always employ their tongues wisely."

"He had not remembered her name, but he had seen her dance — had been carried away and fascinated by the supreme art that can make you forget art."

"On the seat opposite him was an American tourist. The pattern of his clothes, of his overcoat, the grip he carried, down to his hopeful friendliness and his naïve absorption in the scenery, even the guidebook in his hand, all gave him away and proclaimed him a small town American seeing Europe for the first time. In another minute or so, Poirot judged, he would break into speech. His wistful dog-like expression could not be mistaken."

"And then, startling in its crisp transatlantic tones, a voice said: “Stick ’em up.” They swerved around. Schwartz, dressed in a peculiarly vivid set of striped pyjamas stood in the doorway. In his hand he held an automatic. “Stick ’em up, guys. I’m pretty good at shooting.” He pressed the trigger — and a bullet sang past the big man's ear and buried itself in the woodwork of the window. Three pairs of hands were raised rapidly."

"Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning."

"Harold Waring, like many other Englishmen, was a bad linguist."

"“Is he then an unhappy man?” Poirot said: “So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.” The nun said softly: “Ah, a rich man…”"

"It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women."

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

"But when investing money, keep, I beg of you, Hastings, strictly to the conservative."

"They are so busy knocking that they do not notice that the door is open!"

"Remember, he was a fanatic, and there is no fanatic like a religious fanatic."

"Never mind. I knew — that was the great thing."

"“Mademoiselle,” I said, “it is sometimes difficult for a dog to find a scent, but once he has found it, nothing on earth will make him leave it! That is if he is a good dog! And I, mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, am a very good dog.”"

"Never do I deceive you, Hastings. I only permit you to deceive yourself."

"“The English are very stupid,” said Poirot. “They think that they can deceive anyone but that no one can deceive them.”"

"You have an excellent heart, my friend — but your grey cells are in a deplorable condition."

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

"Not if the butcher had become a butcher simply in order to have a chance of murdering the baker. One must always look one step behind, my friend."

"I aroused Judith's contempt by asking what good all this was likely to do to mankind? There is no question that annoys your true scientist more."

"This, Hastings, will be my last case. It will be, too, my most interesting case — and my most interesting criminal."

"I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed."

"I have always been so sure — too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child: "I do not know...""

"We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here — and our last ... They were good days, Yes, they have been good days..."

"Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queu for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England."

"Well, of course, Gwenda dear, you can always do that when you've exhausted every other line of approach, but I always think myself it's better to examine the simplest and most commonplace explanations first."

"It's not impossible my dear. It's just a very remarkable coincidence — and remarkable coincidences do happen."

"These little things are very significant."

"Murder isn't — it really isn't — a thing to tamper with lightheartedly."

"It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years."

"Life seems to me to consist of three parts: the absorbing and usually enjoyable present which rushes on from minute to minute with fatal speed; the future, dim and uncertain, for which one can make any number of interesting plans, the wilder and more improbable the better, since — as nothing will turn out as you expect it to do — you might as well have the fun of planning anyway; and thirdly, the past, the memories and realities that are the bedrock of one's present life, brought back suddenly by a scent, the shape of a hill, an old song — some triviality that makes one suddenly say "I remember…" with a peculiar and quite unexplainable pleasure."

"What governs one's choice of memories? Life is like sitting in a cinema. Flick! Here am I, a child eating éclairs on my birthday. Flick! Two years have passed and I am sitting on my grandmother's lap, being solemnly trussed up as a chicken just arrived from Mr Whiteley's, and almost hysterical with the wit of the joke. Just moments — and in between long empty spaces of months or even years."

"We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man. I think, myself, that one's memories represent those moments which, insignificant as they may seem, nevertheless represent the inner self and oneself as most really oneself. I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. The house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God."

"I have given them life instead of death, freedom instead of the cords of superstition, beauty and truth instead of corruption and exploitation. The old bad days are over for them, the Light of the Aton has risen, and they can dwell in peace and harmony freed from the shadow of fear and oppression."

"One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood. I had a home and a garden that I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother two people who loved each other dearly and made a success of their marriage and of parenthood. Looking back I feel that our house was truly a happy house. That was largely due to my father, for my father was a very agreeable man."

"The quality of agreeableness Is not much stressed nowadays. People tend to ask if a man is clever, industrious, if he contributes to the well-being of the community, if he ‘counts’ in the scheme of things."

"Servants, of course, were not a particular luxury–it was not a case of only the rich having them; the only difference was that the rich had more."

"We had three servants, which was a minimum then."

"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble."

"Looking back, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have contemplated having both a nurse and a servant, but they were considered essentials of life in those days, and were the last things we would have thought of dispensing with. To have committed the extravagance of a car, for instance, would never have entered our minds. Only the rich had cars."