Quotes from Agatha Christie

a competent-looking middle-aged man. He spoke briskly and with decision.

I mind my own business and I expect other people to mind theirs. I don't listen to gossip and tittle-tattle.

We do not agree, eh?" said Poirot. "Well, let us leave it. Time will show which of us is right.

Don't you," I said wearily. "You're a young man. You're zealous in the cause of right. When you get to my age, you'll find that you like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

But I came to it at last through pursuing the rule I have just mentioned. And I was forced to recognize this: That every army and every navy and every police force has a certain number of traitors within its ranks, much as we hate to admit the idea.

The world is yours. The New Heaven and the New Earth. In your new world, my children, let there be freedom and let there be pity … That is all I ask.

I always help old ladies over crossings, and pick up parcels for old gentlemen, in case they should turn out to be eccentric millionaires. But not one of them has ever asked me my name — and quite a lot never said 'Thank you.

Pink with embarrassment, she pushed the bell.

The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells us, is: "Go and find out.

Dangerous? Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

Ach! That." Race

No," said Mr. Bouc thoughtfully. "That is the act of a man driven almost crazy with a frenzied hate—it suggests more the Latin temperament. Or else it suggests, as our friend the chef de train insisted, a woman.

Miss Maple sighed. 'It seemed wonderful at first—unchanged you know—like stepping back into the past—to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed.' She paused. 'But of course, it wasn't really like that. I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn't it?

If one approaches a problem with order and method there should be no difficulty in solving it—none whatever,' said Poirot severely.

Fortunately at Miss Marple's age, there was always some ailment that could be discussed with slight exaggerations on the patient's part. Miss Marple hesitated between "her shoulder" and "her knee," but finally decided upon the knee. Miss Marple's knee, as she would have put it to herself, was always with her.

Her conversation, I soon found, was couched in the telegraphic style.

eyes were red with recent weeping.

It would have to be a very interesting problem to tempt me from my chair. See you, I have affairs of importance of my own to attend to.

tell you, Hastings. This is all very black—very black." "Always darkest before dawn," I said reassuringly.

He thought to himself: "He'll ask me now if I was old enough to be in the War. These old boys always do." But General Macarthur did not mention the War.

Without acute mania it may nevertheless occur that certain natures lack what I should describe as braking power. If you or I were to say, 'I hate someone—I wish he were dead,' the idea would pass from our minds as soon as the words were uttered. The brakes would work automatically. But, in some people the idea, or obsession, holds. They see nothing but the immediate gratification of the idea formed.

Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals - and the process is often fraught with difficulties, There are short cuts.

What is it? You are not attending to what I say." "It is true, my friend. I am much worried." "Why?" "Because Mademoiselle Cynthia does not take sugar in her coffee.

There glimmering white and snowy, enveloped in a delicate rose-coloured mist, rose the glistening pinnacle.