Quotes from Sophie Hannah

I think one of the worst mistakes we make is investing so much significance in details of our lives that don't matter at all. We can just choose. It doesn't matter all that much, and maybe there's no wrong choice.

People aren't supposed to feel jilted and have their hearts broken by their friends.

I left my scarf behind. You sent it on. I meant to buy and send a Thank You card But I forgot, and soon the year was gone And the year after that. My life was hard

The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow.

Not for the first time in our twenty-three-year marriage, I wonder how two people can live happily side by side and sleep in the same bed every night – two people who would probably die for each other if necessary – and yet see the world in such profoundly different ways.

Perhaps the truth is that I don't want to get my happiness-mystery solution from Aristotle, Schopenhauer or Katherine. I want to find it myself. I don't want to be helped or saved by a Poirot equivalent. I want to be the Poirot in my own life.

That's why I'm still worrying, at some level. I'm trying to think positively about a negative situation, when I should be trying to believe that there's nothing negative about the situation.

It's usually rooted either in a belief that other people matter more than you do – that's the people-pleasing part of it – or there could also be an element of perfectionism, the over-achiever's Achilles heel: you can't think well of yourself unless you're over-achieving, so you take on too much, try to do it all perfectly and wear yourself out .

Once while we were watching the denouement scene of a David Suchet Poirot episode, he [my husband] said irritably, 'Why do they all just sit there and let Poirot accuse them of stuff? I'd get up and walk out.

Trainers All Turn Grey (after Robert Frost's 'Nothing Gold Can Stay') You buy your trainers new. They cost a bob or two. At first they're clean and white, The laces thick and tight. Then they must touch the ground – (You have to walk around). You learn to your dismay Trainers all turn grey.

Here is my recommendation: wherever possible, treat anything you can as a mystery. Why? Because mysteries make life better. I love mysteries, including the desperately-craving-an-answer part, more than I love their solutions. Definite answers shut down possibilities, while an unsolved puzzle ignites our imagination and invites us to think, 'What if it turns out to be something shocking and unguessable that will well and truly blow my mind?'.

If you want to be happier than you are now, and solve your problem, nothing needs to change about your life situation. Only your thoughts need to change. Choose new thoughts: […] none of us have any problems that we don't create with our own thoughts.

The Guest Speaker I have to keep myself awake While the guest speaker speaks. For his and for procedure's sake I have to keep myself awake. However long his talk might take (And, Christ, it feels like weeks) I have to keep myself awake While the guest speaker speaks.

If you ask for a memory and they tell you a story, they're lying

Él es la mitad de un hombre perfecto destinado a completarse por una mujer como ella; y ella es una bella perfección dividida, cuya plenitud suprema reside en él.»

Poirot smiled. "You think that I waste time on trivialities, mademoiselle? Non. These little details, apparently unconnected to the two killings, are vital to know. They are the little key that will open the heavy door.

los más débiles son los que más gritan y los que más hacen sufrir a los demás.

como si el hecho de tener un ejército de acólitos sin criterio fuese capaz de probar algo. Sólo hay que fijarse en la situación política para ver que las cosas no pueden funcionar de ese modo.

Mademoiselle, if you had not intended it, it would not have happened," said Poirot. "Hands do not move unless minds make them move....

memories of the past are not the past. They're thoughts you have in the present, about the past.

And once a first murder has been committed, the second becomes so much easier. The law against killing our fellow men and women is not there only to protect them, but also to protect us from our worst impulses.

Dom and I have often agreed that trees are like fish – we ought to know more than we do about the differences between the various types, but we've reached our forties and can still only identify weeping willows and salmon with any certainty.

When an author took the time and trouble to choose exactly the right words and arrange them in the right order, there was a possibility of genuine communication taking place, the thoughtful writer reaching the thoughtful reader. The opposite of what happened when two people opened their mouths and simply let their half-formed, incoherent thoughts spill out.

Let us stay in this room forever and never open the door. We can tell ourselves the lie that all is well and that all the harm that's been done can be undone. [...] Please, nobody say a single word. Please let me go on believing it for as long as I possibly can.