Quotes from Agatha Christie

She's not sensual. She doesn't want affairs. It's just cold-blooded experiment on her part and the fun of stirring people up and setting them against each other. She dabbled in that too. She's the sort of woman who's never had a row with anyone in her life--but rows always happen where she is! She makes them happen. She's kind of female Iago. She must have drama. But she doesn't want to be involved herself. She's always outside pulling strings--looking on--enjoying it!

Heart failure, it explains nothing! I have yet to meet a corpse whose heart it still beats.

Living alone, with no one to consult or talk to, one might easily become melodramatic, and imagine things which had no foundation on fact.

In my opinion, the state of mind of a community is always directly due to the influence of the man at the top.

Poirot, watching him, felt suddenly a doubt--an uncomfortable twinge. Was there, here, something that he had missed? Some richness of the spirit? Sadness crept over him. Yes, he should have become acquainted with the classics. Long ago. Now, alas, it was too late....

As one journeys through life," said Poirot, "one finds more and more that people are often interested in things that are none of their own business. Even more so than they are in things that could be considered as their own business.

Women, in my experience, if they once reach the determination to commit suicide, usually wish to reveal the state of mind that led to the fatal action. They covet the limelight.

Watch and pray," he said. "Watch and pray. The day of judgment is at hand.

They knew, none better, the havoc caused by a good-looking young man to the hearts of adolescent girls.

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands." He

I may," said Poirot in a completely unconvinced tone, "be wrong." Morton smiled. "But that doesn't often happen to you?" "No. Though I will admit - yes, I am forced to admit - that it has happened to me." "I must say I'm glad to hear it! To be always right must be sometimes monotonous." "I do not find it so," Poirot assured him.

If only father would be decent and die, I should be all right.

It is the brain, the little grey cells" — he topped his forehead — "on which one must rely. The senses mislead.

I help those who can help themselves.

An artist! An excuse for every kind of loose living, for drunkenness, for brawling, for infidelity.

It is a theory of mine," I said, warming to my theme, "that we owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness?either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself?and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes—they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

Coffee, then, Madame. You need some stimulant.

I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous.

You have no sense of proportion, Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder.

A woman would know all right about her own husband.

Now there has been a rearrangement of the kaleidoscope.

I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you've had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong.

What I think is a different matter. Maybe I think some rather curious things—but until thinking's got you somewhere it's no use talking about it.