Quotes from Agatha Christie

Do you know this part of the world well?

He, of course, is a liar, but that doesn't really matter because, if you know liars are liars, it comes to the same thing.

What does one say to a woman who has just killed her husband?

If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow.

Nurse Leatheran has been giving me valuable information about the various members of the expedition. Incidentally I have learnt a good deal - about the victim. And the victim, mademoiselle, is very often the clue to the mystery.

The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited—it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine—and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf! blow them away!

His mind, shrinking from reality, ran for safety along these unimportant details.

Character, mon cher, does not stand still. It can gather strength. It can also deteriorate. What a person really is, is only apparent when the test comes—that is, the moment when you stand or fall on your own feet.

The hardest thing in life and the hardest to live through is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering. You can do things to aid people's physical disabilities; but you can do little to help the pain of the heart.

go down to the country, take a house, get interested in local politics, in local scandal, in village gossip. Take an inquisitive and violent interest in your neighbours.

The sons of rich men are proverbially wild.

In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats.

Los argumentos se me ocurren en los momentos más insospechados, como cuando voy caminando por la calle o me estoy probando un sombrero en una tienda y, de repente, una idea espléndida me viene a la cabeza.

There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

I successfully chloroformed a hedgehog that was entangled in the tennis net and so managed to release it.

In the end is my beginning… That's a quotation I've often heard people say.

If you look into somebody's soul by accident, you feel a bit embarrassed about cashing in.

She looked at nobody, but just before she went out, she raised her eyes and took a speedy glance at me. There was something in that looks that startled me - though it was difficult to describe why. There was malice in it, and a curious intimate knowledge. I felt that, without effort, and almost without curiosity, she had known exactly what thoughts were in my mind.

There are crimes that cannot be brought home to their perpetrators. Instance the Rogerses'. Another instance, old Wargrave, who committed his murder strictly within the law.

Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them—and, that way she missed love.

I must say that ever since I have been unable to stop myself applying this criterion to any male stranger. Good-looking, perhaps–but are his legs common?

One takes things for granted too much," said Emily Brent.

Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.