Quotes from Sophie Hannah

There comes a point in most cases—and by no means only those in which Hercule Poirot has involved himself—when one starts to feel that it would be a greater comfort, and actually no less effective, to talk only to oneself and dispense with all attempts to communicate with the outside world.

Only in his dreams had he encountered this sensation before: the doom-laden knowledge that one is trapped in a predicament that makes no sense and will never make sense, no matter what one does.

Never mind. I'll find a leaf to talk to instead.

I have spent my life working for the greater good and the protection of the innocent and--yes!--the wrongly accused. That group includes you, monsieur. Also, today, it includes Hercule Poirot. I too am wrongly accused.

I have always thought that if Father ever runs out of guilty people to send to the gallows, he'll turn his attentions to the innocent and pretend they're guilty--both in court and in his own mind.

McCrodden's brisk, business-as-usual way of speaking chilled Poirot. It lent an air of objectivity to his words, as if he was merely conveying the plain and uncontroversial facts.

My experience as a police inspector has taught me that many people are able to regard themselves with inordinate fondness, no matter what heinous crimes they have committed. They care only about how they look to others, and whether they can get away with it.

Goodness me, someone's been rumour-mongering for all he's worth, eh?

Vout was one of those people who believed in things like murder, and evil, and all forms of serious unpleasantness only when they did not affect him personally. Were he to read in a newspaper that a maniac had chopped five members of the same family into small pieces, he would not question it. Suggest to him, though, that a man he regarded as a friend might have been murdered, and you would never succeed in persuading him that it was possible.

Monsieur, I have not, in all my years, met a father who sought to have his son condemned to death for a murder he did not commit.

Truly you describe the perfect family," said Poirot. "Yet no family is without its troubles. There must have been something that was less than perfect.

When one has a driving preoccupation [...] it colours the way one sees the world.

I have told you, my friend: do not expect always to be given the answer.

I waved at him to stop, like a railway signalman in the face of an out-of-control train hurtling towards him.

Poirot nodded and permitted himself a small smile. When there was no other pleasure to be taken from a situation, one might as well enjoy being correct, he thought.

He sounded as if he might be amused by the notion if he were not so weary.

The puzzle of why most people, even intelligent people, were so illogical and pig-headed was one to which Poirot had devoted quite enough consideration while lying awake the previous night...

But maybe it was true, and the lie was the way he made his voice sound when he said it.

As surely as John McCrodden had filled Poirot's room with cold contempt, Annabel Treadway had brought sorrow in with her.

Wouldn't it be simply marvellous if he were to hang for his lies and calumnies against me--the very fate he had in mind for me?

If I were someone who could ever be pushed over the edge into performing an act of violence, that moment would surely have come approximately ten minutes ago. Instead, and to my great regret, I seem to be a person who can balance quietly on the edge he is pushed towards for as long as anybody feels inclined to yell at him.

I was unsure how I felt about this. I used to worry about not knowing how I felt in certain situations, but I had more recently decided to treat them as a convenient opportunity to feel nothing at all.

People mind so much less when old people die, which is dreadfully unfair! "He had a good innings," they say, as if that makes it tolerable, whereas when a child dies everyone knows it's the worst kind of tragedy. I believe every death is a tragedy!

One must stick by one's principles or else the fabric of society crumbles. If a child of mine deserved it, I would hang him myself.