Quotes from Agatha Christie

My dear Bobby, did I understand you to say that someone had offered you a thousand a year? A thousand?" "Holed it in one, Dad," said Bobby. "It's impossible," said the Vicar. Bobby was not hurt by this frank incredulity. His estimate of his own monetary value differed little from that of his father. "They must be complete mutts," he agreed heartily.

Los viejos pecados tienen largas sombras

We had reached Leastways Cottage, and Poirot ushered me upstairs to his own room. He offered me one of the tiny Russian cigarettes he himself occasionally smoked. I was amused to notice that he stowed away the used matches most carefully in a little china pot. My momentary annoyance vanished.

A murderer is seldom content with one crime. Give him time, and a lack of suspicion, and he'll commit another

Oh, I leave it to your imagination, Mr. Latimer. I would not presume to give you advice, you know. The advice of such elderly fogeys as myself is invariably treated with scorn. Rightly so, perhaps, who knows? But we old buffers like to think that experience has taught us something. We have noticed a good deal, you know, in the course of a lifetime." A

What's wrong with my proposition? Poirot rose. If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like tour face, M. Ratchett, he said.

Ackroyd was sitting as I had left him in the armchair before the fire. His head had fallen sideways, and clearly visible, just below the collar of his coat, was a shining piece of twisted metalwork. Parker and I advanced till we stood over the recumbent figure. I heard the butler draw in his breath with a sharp hiss. "Stabbed from be'ind," he murmured. "'Orrible!

Already, at twenty-three minutes to one, Ratchett was dead—" "And it was his murderer speaking!" finished M. Bouc impressively. Poirot

What was the point of all the odd questions he was continually shooting at her, Iris? Wasn't there something very queer about George lately? The odd fuddled look he had in the evenings! Lucilla attributed it to a glass or so too much of port. Lucilla would! No, there was something queer about George lately. He seemed to be labouring under a mixture of excitement interlarded with great spaces of complete apathy when he sunk in a coma.

Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.

Horrible house! Iris shivered. She hated it. A gracious well-built house, harmoniously furnished and decorated (Ruth Lessing was never at fault!). And curiously, frighteningly vacant. They didn't live there. They occupied it. As soldiers, in a war, occupied some lookout post.

Murder, you see, is an amateur crime. I'm speaking of course of the kind of murder you have in mind - not gangster stuff. One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman - and they've killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them.

Well, well. I know all we medicos hand these things out freely nowadays. Nobody tells young women who can't sleep to count sheep, or get up and eat a biscuit, or write a couple of letters and then go back to bed. Instant remedies, that's what people demand nowadays. Sometimes I think it's a pity we give them to them. You've got to learn to put up with things in life. All very well to stuff a comforter into a baby's mouth to stop it crying. Can't go on doing that all a person's life.

The guard looked from one to the other. His mind was soon made up. His training led him to despise foreigners, and to respect and admire well-dressed gentleman who travelled first class.

You might start a new religion yourself, with the creed: 'There is no one so clever as Hercule Poirot, Amen, D. C. Repeat ad lib.'!

You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,' said Poirot. 'You can relieve your feelings by expedient of the printed word. You have the power of the pen over your enemies.

Your conclusions are, I think, justified," he said. "Ulick Norman Owen! In Miss Brent's letter, though the signature of the surname is a mere scrawl the Christian names are reasonably clear-Una Nancy -in either case, you notice, the same initials. Ulick Norman OwenUna Nancy Owen-each time, that is to say, U. N. Owen. Or by a slight stretch of fancy, UNKNOWN!

All these Ministers insist on coming in and having kittens all over the place.

That's different. She's a woman, and women act in that silly way. I'm not saying she did it for a moment. She heard he was accused and she trumped up a story. I'm used to that sort of game. You wouldn't believe the fool things I've known women do.

What," asked Dr. Constantine with interest, "does a pukka sahib mean?" "It means," said Poirot, "that Miss Debenham's father and brothers were at the same kind of school as Colonel Arbuthnot.

But self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do.

To a historian that always is a difficulty. At what point in history does one particular portion of history begin

Sanders was hanged," said Miss Marple crisply. "And a good job too. I have never regretted my part in bringing that man to justice. I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment.

Life was not a matter of safety— it must be hazarded to win the game.