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The Agatha Christie Collection Christie Crime Classics The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr Quin The Sittaford -- Agatha Christie
There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger. -- Agatha Christie
Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists. -- Agatha Christie
Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen. -- Agatha Christie
It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever! sooner or later they will give themselves away. -- Agatha Christie
It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality ... We've only one life to live. -- Agatha Christie
I was born to live dangerously. -- Agatha Christie
Anybody who can belive six impossible things before breakfast wins hands down in this game. -- Agatha Christie
You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?'
You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.'
That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion. -- Agatha Christie
He had had a lonely life and a lonely death. But it had been the kind of loneliness that spends itself in living amongst people, and in passing the time that way not unpleasantly. Major Palgrave might have been a lonely man, he had also been quite a cheerful one. -- Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture.
Miss Lemon: I don't even see that. -- Agatha Christie
Everything is possible, isn't it? The world soon teaches one that! -- Agatha Christie
All life is a jest, Imhotep - and it is death who laughs last. Do you not hear it at every feast? Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die. -- Agatha Christie
Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it. -- Agatha Christie
You don't appreciate a faithful husband when you've got one,' said Tommy.
'All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,' said Tuppance.
'You have the wrong kind of friends,' said Tommy. -- Agatha Christie
Yes, I remember the one you mean. All a lot of hooey, though. -- Agatha Christie
I'm not often bored,' I assured her. Life's not long enough for that. -- Agatha Christie
Oh! Do not excite yourself. Shall I say that he interested me because he was trying to grow a mustache and as yet the result is poor." Poirot stroked his own magnificent mustache tenderly. "It is an art," he murmured, "the growing of the mustache! I have sympathy for all who attempt it. -- Agatha Christie
Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored. -- Agatha Christie
Because I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. I've often done it over contracts. And it's also a good thing to seem stupider than you are. -- Agatha Christie
I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. -- Agatha Christie
Guy Carpenter frowned and came into the drawing room through the window. He had a long face like a horse, he was pale and looked rather supercilious. His manner was pompous. Hercule Poirot found him unattractive. -- Agatha Christie
What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett. -- Agatha Christie
There's a convention that one doesn't speak ill of the dead. That's stupid, I think. The truth's always the truth. On the whole it's better to keep your mouth shut about living people. You might conceivably injure them. The dead are past that. But the harm they've done lives after them sometimes. -- Agatha Christie
Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb. -- Agatha Christie
We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age. -- Agatha Christie
Oh, fancy! All these. I really have forgotten a lot of these. Oh, here's The Amulet and here's The Psamayad. Here's The New Treasure Seekers. Oh, I love all those. No, don't put them in shelves yet, Albert. I think I'll have to read them first. -- Agatha Christie
This book is dedicated to the many readers in this and in other countries who write to me asking: 'What has happened to Tommy and Tuppence? What are they doing now?' My best wishes to you all, and I hope you will enjoy meeting Tommy and Tuppence again, years older, but with spirit unquenched! -- Agatha Christie
I avoided my own friends and acquaintances, yet the loneliness of my existence was insupportable. -- Agatha Christie
There comes to everyone a turning point in their lives, M. Poirot. They stand at the crossroads and have to decide. My profession interests me enormously; it is a sorrow - a very great sorrow - to abandon it. But there are other claims. There is, M. Poirot, the happiness of a human being. -- Agatha Christie
God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards! -- Agatha Christie
Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair of causes. It is much more-how shall I say?-fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one's love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting ... that the loved one will turn to someone else. -- Agatha Christie
I mean that if you are not absolutely sure of a thing, it is so difficult to commit yourself to a definite course of action. -- Agatha Christie
Don't be a fool," Vera Claythorne urged herself. "It's all right. Elly Kleinman and others are downstairs. All four of them. There's no one in the room. There can't be. You're imagining things, my girl. -- Agatha Christie
I, myself, was always recognized ... as the "slow one" in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was ... an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day. -- Agatha Christie
After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe. -- Agatha Christie
But facts are facts, and if one is proved to be wrong, one must just be humble about it and start again. -- Agatha Christie
Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham. -- Agatha Christie
... people are never like what you remember them. You make them, as the years go by, more and more the way you wish them to be, and as you think you remember them. If you want to remember them as agreeable and gay and handsome, you make them far more so than they actually were. -- Agatha Christie
If one could order a crime as one does a dinner, what would you choose? ... Let's review the menu. Robbery? Frogery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder - red-blooded murder - with trimmings, of course. -- Agatha Christie
It seems dreadful to say so, but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man. She thinks at once that her love will reform him. -- Agatha Christie
What can I say at seventy-five? Thank God for my good life,and for all the love that has been given to me. -- Agatha Christie
He doesn't seem to have been one of those food faddists who'll eat any mortal thing so long as it isn't cooked. My sister's husband's like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips. But -- Agatha Christie
It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial. -- Agatha Christie
I loved her- I always loved her- no matter what she was-I wanted her safe- not shut up- a prisoner for life, eating her heart out. And we did keep her safe- for many years
Phillip Stark -- Agatha Christie
I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me. -- Agatha Christie
I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood;
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-read heath,
The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood
And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers "Death". -- Agatha Christie
Ahh it rejoices the heart. Nothing here offends the eye"
~Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie) -- Agatha Christie
There are more important things than finding the murderer. And justice is a fine word, but it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what one means by it. In my opinion, the important thing is to clear the innocent. - Hercule Poirot -- Agatha Christie
Now, as I expect you know, there is nothing more cruel than talk, and there is nothing more difficult to combat. When people say things behind your back there is nothing you can refute or deny, and the rumours go on growing and growing, and no one can stop them. I -- Agatha Christie
The illusion that freedom is the prerogative of one's own particular race is fairly widespread. Dr Gerard was wiser. He knew that no race, no country and no individual could be described as free. But he also knew that there were different degrees of bondage. -- Agatha Christie
Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken -- Agatha Christie
Her account is that she tried to get out of having to read it, but it was no use."
"And that's fair enough," sighed Craddock. "If anyone is really determined to lend you a book, you never can get out of it! -- Agatha Christie
Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with - an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived. -- Agatha Christie
Underneath the quarrels,the misunderstandings, the apparent hostility of everyday life, a real and true affection can exist. Married life, I mused, as I went to bed,
was a curious thing. -- Agatha Christie
The body - the cage - is everything of the most respectable - but through the bars, the wild animal looks out. -- Agatha Christie
I had just finished carving some boiled beef (remarkably tough by the way) and on resuming my seat I remarked, in a spirit most unbecoming to my cloth, that anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service. -- Agatha Christie
Real grief is real. It makes you feel awful but it does something to you. I mean, it works it out like perspiration. -- Agatha Christie
Because when you're in love, you think you're invincible. It blinds you. And you don't seem to care. -- Agatha Christie
It's really very unpleasant. And not being able to say anything to answer back makes it rankle more, if you know what I mean. -- Agatha Christie
You took thoughts, choosing them out of your store, and then, not dwelling on them, you let them slip through the fingers of your mind, never clutching at them, never dwelling on them, no concentration ... just letting them drift gently past. -- Agatha Christie
I have made it a habit," said Miss Marple. "To be careful?" "I should not put it exactly like that, but I have made a point of being always ready to disbelieve as well as believe anything that is told to me. -- Agatha Christie
Suzanne likes thrills, but she hates being uncomfortable. -- Agatha Christie
The police, they're seemingly so frank, and they tell you nothing. -- Agatha Christie
What you do not understand is that there are things that cannot be bought. -- Agatha Christie
Funny, just this minute he didn't want much to get away from the island. -- Agatha Christie
But there are many fools in the world. One praises God for their existence and keeps out of their way. -- Agatha Christie
A lot of additional pain and grief is caused by honesty, remarked Hercule Poirot. -- Agatha Christie
A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep. -- Agatha Christie
You do think you know about everything," said her husband.
I do," said Tuppence. -- Agatha Christie
What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's. -- Agatha Christie
If only-if only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your moustache. If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache-a thing of beauty such as mine. -- Agatha Christie
The saddest 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. -- Agatha Christie
It's always interesting when one doesn't see. If you don't see what a thing means, you must be looking at it wrong way round. -- Agatha Christie
So I suggest you cut the cackle and come to the horses. -- Agatha Christie
You will go to the lady and say certain things as i instruct you
Suppose she sends for the police?
She will not send for the police
You cannot know that !
Mon cher, practically speaking, i know EVERYTHING -- Agatha Christie
Do not antagonize your son! He is of an age to choose for himself. Because his choice is not your choice, do not assume that you must be right. If it is a misfortune - then accept misfortune. Be at hand to aid him when he needs aid. But do not turn him against you. -- Agatha Christie
Men - ' said Miss Williams, and stopped.
As a rich property owner says 'Bolsheviks' - as an earnest Communist says 'Capitalists!' - as a good housewife says 'Blackbeetles' - so did Miss Williams say 'Men! -- Agatha Christie
It is the sex angle that sells stories, that makes news. give people scandal allied to sex and it appeals far more than any mere political chicanery or fraud. (Hercule Poirot) -- Agatha Christie
Evidence of identification was given by the husband, and the only other evidence was medical. Heather Badcock had died as a result of four grains of hy-ethyl-dexyl-barbo-quinde-lorytate, or, let us be frank, some such name. -- Agatha Christie
She had a great power of love and hate but no stability. That's what's so sad for anyone, to be born with no stability. -- Agatha Christie
He was at the stage of a meal when one becomes philosophic. -- Agatha Christie
Well," said Adam, as Poirot went out. "First girls' knees, and now draughtsmanship! What next, I wonder! -- Agatha Christie
You want beauty," said Hercule Poirot. "Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth I want. Always truth. -- Agatha Christie
I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment. -- Agatha Christie
That's the depressing part of places like this. Guest houses run by broken-down gentlepeople. They're full of failures - of people who have never got anywhere and never will get anywhere, of people who - who have been defeated and broken by life, of people who are old and tired and finished. -- Agatha Christie
Dieu! It is that in this country you treat the affairs gastronomic with a criminal indifference. -- Agatha Christie
Yes, yes-you will give him the earth-because you love him. Love him too much for safety or for happiness. But you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving. -- Agatha Christie
I've got a theory that one can always get anything one wants if one will pay the price. And do you know what the price is, nine times out of ten? Compromise. A beastly thing, compromise, but it steals upon you as you near middle age. -- Agatha Christie
I've a theory that one can always get anything one wants if one will pay the price. And do you know what the price is, nine times out of ten? Compromise. -- Agatha Christie
If you've been snubbed, or ignored, or frustrated, and your life's pretty drab and empty, I suppose you get a sense of power from stabbing in the dark at people who are happy and enjoying themselves. -- Agatha Christie
He said at last, when Miss Gilchrist had twittered into silence: -- Agatha Christie
The young people think the old people are fools
but the old people know the young people are fools. -- Agatha Christie
Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot] -- Agatha Christie
I was tired of this silly joking about my 'speaking countenance'. I could keep a secret as well as anyone. Poirot had always persisted in the humiliating belief that I am a transparent character and that anyone can read what is passing in my mind. -- Agatha Christie
He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr Jonathan, speaking of Juliet ... No Juliet here - unless perhaps one could imagine Juliet a survivor - living on, deprived of Romeo ... Was it not an essential part of Juliet's make-up that that she should die young? -- Agatha Christie
It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves. -- Agatha Christie
You are, madame, so perfectly armoured, so completely sure of yourself.'
'Now I wonder, if I am to take that as a compliment?'
'It is, perhaps, a warning--not to treat life with arrogance. -- Agatha Christie
I daresay people have liked murderers," said Tuppence very reasonably. "It's like swindlers and confidence tricksmen who always look so honest and seem so honest. I daresay murderers all seem very nice and particularly softhearted. That sort of thing. -- Agatha Christie
In my opinion half the people who spend their lives avoiding being run over by buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way. They're no good. -- Agatha Christie
All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter ... a marble-topped bedroom washstand table made a good place; the dining-room table between meals was also suitable. -- Agatha Christie
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties. -- Agatha Christie
What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking. -- Agatha Christie
The truth is, that one doesn't really know anything about anybody. Not even the people who are nearest to you...'
'Isn't that going a little too far--exaggerating too much?'
'I don't think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have made of them for yourself. -- Agatha Christie
Life is only one of the Great Illusions. -- Agatha Christie
There's no agony like [getting started]. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off. -- Agatha Christie
You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live. -- Agatha Christie
I said, life will not pass her by. Strange and exciting events will surround her. You've only got to look at her to know it. -- Agatha Christie
You're shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this - they always think the worst! -- Agatha Christie
She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?'
'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere. -- Agatha Christie
Every woman should make one mistake matrimonially. - Alex Restarick -- Agatha Christie
Edward turned to Miss Marple. "It's like this, you see. As Uncle Mathew grew older, he got more and more suspicious. He didn't trust anybody." "Very wise of him," said Miss Marple. "The depravity of human nature is unbelievable. -- Agatha Christie
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. -- Agatha Christie
To dear Peter, most faithful of friends and dearest of companions, a dog in a thousand -- Agatha Christie
I've always jumped on sentiment - and here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are! I've always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph under my pillow, and dream about him all night. It's dreadful to feel you've been false to your principles. -- Agatha Christie
How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamour could vanish as though it had never been. -- Agatha Christie
At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled. -- Agatha Christie
The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood. -- Agatha Christie
My dear Mr. Schwartz, you appeared in the nick of time. It might have been a drama on the stage! I am very much in your debt. -- Agatha Christie
Three-Act Tragedy Death in -- Agatha Christie
The dog hunts rabbits. Hercule Poirot hunts murderers. -- Agatha Christie
What are murderers like? Some of them, have been thoroughly nice chaps. -- Agatha Christie
Beneath her self-control, though he did not guess it, was the impatience of the keen brain watching a slower brain laboriously cover the ground it had already traversed in a flash. -- Agatha Christie
Do you remember the Lady of Shalott? The mirror crack'd from side to side: 'The doom has come upon me,' cried the Lady of Shalott. Well, that's what she looked like. People laugh at Tennyson nowadays, but the Lady of Shalott always thrilled me when I was young and it still does. -- Agatha Christie
Servants were the main topic of conversation in St. Mary Mead, so it was not difficult to lead the conversation in that direction. -- Agatha Christie
Jonas knew for a fact that it had been purchased by the Admiralty with a view to carrying out some very hush-hush experiments! -- Agatha Christie
I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced -- Agatha Christie
Belgian stranger - all -- Agatha Christie
Fellow has the wrong clothes and all that. French chap-or Belgian. Queer fellow, but he's got the goods all right. -- Agatha Christie
white moustache trembling -- Agatha Christie
In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth! (Hercule Poirot) -- Agatha Christie
If the thing you want beyond anything cannot be, it is much better to recognize it and go forward, instead of dwelling on one's regrets and hopes. -- Agatha Christie
The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal. -- Agatha Christie
I'm going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He's going to marry and stick to me. -- Agatha Christie
I know those kinds of lenses, said Tuppence. By the time you've adjusted the shutter and stopped down and calculated the exposure and kept your eye on the spirit level, your brain gives out and you yearn for the simple browning. -- Agatha Christie
Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more. -- Agatha Christie
Starting off from Cranchester. All later events seem to have been wiped -- Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot stared hard at Superintendent Sugden's moustache. Its luxuriance seemed to fascinate him. -- Agatha Christie
There is nothing so terrible as to live in an atmosphere of suspicion - to see eyes watching you and the love in them changing to fear - nothing so terrible as to suspect those near and dear to you - It is poisonous - a miasma. -- Agatha Christie
They found he'd had a lethal dose of something that only a doctor could pronounce properly. As far as I remember it sounds vaguely like di-flor, hexagonal-ethylcarbenzol. That's not the right name. But that's roughly what it sounds like. -- Agatha Christie
The amount of missing girls I've had to trace and their family and their friends always say the same thing. 'She was a bright and affectionate disposition and had no men friends'. That's never true. It's unnatural. Girls ought to have men friends. If not, then there's something wrong about them ... -- Agatha Christie
There are questions that you don't ask because you're afraid of the answers to them. -- Agatha Christie
Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier) -- Agatha Christie
It was due to his tact, to his judgment, to his sympathetic manipulation of human beings that the atmosphere had always been such a happy one ... If there was a change, therefore, the change must be due to the man at the top. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
It's just that I am not really a safe person to be with. The life I'd lead wouldn't be a safe life. -- Agatha Christie
I love autumn. It's so much richer than spring. -- Agatha Christie
"Look here," I said, "people like to collect disasters." -- Agatha Christie
The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen. -- Agatha Christie
It's a fine murdering day, (sang Bunch) And as balmy as May And the sleuths from the village are gone." A rattle of crockery being dumped in the sink drowned the next lines, but as the Rev. Julian Harmon left the house, he heard the final triumphant assertion: "And we'll all go a'murdering today! -- Agatha Christie
DON'T EAT NONE OF THE PLUM PUDDING. ONE WHO WISHES YOU WELL. -- Agatha Christie
To every problem, there is a most simple solution. -- Agatha Christie
Yes, it is as you say. You now behold a detective- a great detective, I may say- in the act of detecting! -- Agatha Christie
The belief in a superstratum of human beings ... is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men'
you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain:
humility and brotherhood. -- Agatha Christie
Natural affection is one thing," said Miss Ramsbottom, "and I hope I've got as much of it as anyone. But I won't stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to be destroyed. -- Agatha Christie
I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty
to one's friends and one's family and one's caste. -- Agatha Christie
The trouble in this life is that you never really know where you're going.
~Andy Peters -- Agatha Christie
I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. Goes to sleep all winter and doesn't eat anything more than grass as far as I know, to live all the summer. Not an interesting life perhaps, but a very peaceful one. -- Agatha Christie
I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim-it is the picture of a girl watching her lover dies. -- Agatha Christie
Achievement brings with it its own anticlimax. -- Agatha Christie
Poison has a certain appeal ... It has not the crudeness of the revolver bullet or the blunt weapon. -- Agatha Christie
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. -- Agatha Christie
The law. Lady Frances, is an uncertain animal. It has twists and turns that surprise the non-legal mind. -- Agatha Christie
She was a very good, kind woman. I could not have continued to live in the same house with her, but I did recognize her intrinsic worth. -- Agatha Christie
There is, as Miss Marple would say, a lot of human nature in all of us. -- Agatha Christie
Nurses - nurses, you'm all the same. Full of cheerfulness over other people's troubles. -- Agatha Christie
In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats. -- Agatha Christie
Miss Marple made a ladylike noise of vexation like a cat sneezing to indicate profound disgust. -- Agatha Christie
Detective stories are mostly bunkum ... But they amuse people ... And they're useful sometimes. -- Agatha Christie
In case, I would prefer to say, that some circumstances should strike me in a different light to the one in which it struck you. Human reactions vary and so does human experience.
~Hercule Poirot -- Agatha Christie
It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. -- Agatha Christie
I would like it to be said that I was a good writer of detective and thriller stories. -- Agatha Christie
The detective's highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favours under the guise of conferring them! -- Agatha Christie
That's the secret of existence. We're all a little mad. -- Agatha Christie
All women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or for their best friend. -- Agatha Christie
You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. -- Agatha Christie
Hasting - There are times when it is one's duty to assert oneself. -- Agatha Christie
I successfully chloroformed a hedgehog that was entangled in the tennis net and so managed to release it. -- Agatha Christie
The truth often does sound unconvincing. -- Agatha Christie
I find most of the human race extraordinarily repulsive. They probably reciprocate this feeling. -- Agatha Christie
It was borne in upon her audience that the outside of Jane's charming head was distinctly superior to the inside. -- Agatha Christie
Loyalty it is a pestilential thing in crime. Again and again it obscures the truth. -- Agatha Christie
Such a sweet letter from Lady Conway ... You remember my telling you about her? Her memory's bad. Can't recognize her relations always and tells them to go away."
"That might be shrewdness really," said Miss Marple, "rather than a loss of memory. -- Agatha Christie
Me and my old man went on a coach trip to Switzerland and Italy once and it was a whole hour further on there. Must be something to do with this Common Market. I don't hold with the Common Market and nor does Mr. Curtain. England's good enough for me. -- Agatha Christie
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't, luckily, have to bother about that. -- Agatha Christie
The parsley sinking into the butter on a hot day, -- Agatha Christie
A great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness. -- Agatha Christie
You should employ your little grey cells -- Agatha Christie
Hate doesn't last. Love does. -- Agatha Christie
Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact. -- Agatha Christie
Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he'll always be less than a man. -- Agatha Christie
Like many old people she slept lightly and had periods of wakefulness which she used for the planning of some action or actions to be carried out on the next or following days. -- Agatha Christie
Life is a difficult business ... It needs infinite courage and a lot of endurance. And in the end one wonders: 'Was it worth while?' - Mrs. Lorrimer, Cards on the Table -- Agatha Christie
I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries. -- Agatha Christie
An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. -- Agatha Christie
A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man. (Inspector Miller) -- Agatha Christie
Eve. The Lee family reunion, never a lively affair, is interrupted -- Agatha Christie
What are you doing, Poirot?"
"I dissect rucksacks. It is very interesting. -- Agatha Christie
No," I said. "There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I might concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so very busy punishing ourselves. -- Agatha Christie
Human nature is always interesting ... And it's curious to see how certain types always tend to act in exactly the same way. - Miss Marple, The Herb of Death, Pg. 167 -- Agatha Christie
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate. -- Agatha Christie
She had often been alone in the house before - but she had never before been so conscious of being alone in it. -- Agatha Christie
I can think of nothing more soul destroying in life than to persist in trying to do a thing you want desperately to do well, and to know that you are at the best second rate. -- Agatha Christie
I pass over the spectacle of Poirot on a camel. He started by groans and lamentations and ended by shrieks, gesticulations and invocations to the Virgin Mary and every Saint in the calendar. In the end, he descended ignominiously and finished the journey on a diminutive donkey. -- Agatha Christie
No sign, so far, of anything sinister - but I live in hope. -- Agatha Christie
Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle appealing manner- Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous. -- Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot spread out his hands in his most foreign manner. -- Agatha Christie
People more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you. -- Agatha Christie
There are many to whom money has no personal appeal, but who can be tempted by the power it confers. -- Agatha Christie
You prefer to continue knitting, that is your decision. If you prefer to serve the cause of justice, I hope that you may at least find it interesting. Let justice roll down like waters. And righteousness like an everlasting stream. Amos. -- Agatha Christie
If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it - often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect. -- Agatha Christie
Nineteen, twenty, my plate's empty.' But the reader's plate is full -- Agatha Christie
In fact,' said Poirot, 'she stabbed him in the dark, not realising that he was dead already, but somehow deduced that he had a watch in his pyjama pocket, took it out, put back the hands blindly and gave it the requisite dent. -- Agatha Christie
No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
Poirot -- Agatha Christie
The past is the father of the present. -- Agatha Christie
And anyway, a man has no business to let himself be made a fool of by a woman. It's his own look out if he does. -- Agatha Christie
You tell your lies and you think nobody knows. But there are two people who know. Yes- two people. One is le bon Dieu - and the other is Hercule Poirot -- Agatha Christie
There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time. -- Agatha Christie
That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret drawer! That would not fool the police long. -- Agatha Christie
A man who has shot lions in large quantities has an unfair advantage over other men. -- Agatha Christie
This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. -- Agatha Christie
You know, Maureen, I seem to have seen that name somewhere." "Home Perm, perhaps. He looks like a hairdresser." Poirot winced. -- Agatha Christie
To marry and have children, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred--more, in a thousand, can make for herself a name and position as you have done. -- Agatha Christie
Poirot was standing in the larder in a dramtic attitude. In his hand he was brandishing a leg of mutton.
'My dear Poirot! What is the matter? have you gone mad?'
'Regard i pray you this mutton! But regard it closely! -- Agatha Christie
Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military moustache, air of dignity immense! -- Agatha Christie
It seemed longer and redder than any car could be. It had a long gleaming bonnet of polished metal. -- Agatha Christie
A brave new world. There isn't anything really like that, is there?"
"You don't believe in it?"
"Do you?"
"There is always a brave new world," said Poirot, "but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves. -- Agatha Christie
These women all lose their heads over a good-looking clergyman. You hear of it over and over again. -- Agatha Christie
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. -- Agatha Christie
It was a fantastic moment. In it, Anthony Marston seemed to be something more than mortal. Afterwards more than one of those present remembered that moment. -- Agatha Christie
I thought then, and indeed have thought ever since, what a wonderful person Max is. He is so quiet, so sparing with words of commiseration. He does things. He does just the things you want done and that consoles you more than anything else could. -- Agatha Christie
There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash. -- Agatha Christie
One of the worst things in the world today, the unkindness of woman to woman. You -- Agatha Christie
There was, of course, central heating, but it was not apparent. -- Agatha Christie
You can't rightly estimate what a man will do when he's in drink. -- Agatha Christie
He played the part of the devil too successfully. But he was not the devil. Au fond, he was a stupid man. And so - he died."
"Because he was stupid?"
"It is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished, madame. -- Agatha Christie
You cannot mix up sentiment and reason. -- Agatha Christie
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas. -- Agatha Christie
Sanity is the one unbelievable bore. One must be mad, slightly twisted - then one sees life from a new and entrancing angle. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
And supposing the Coroner's jury returns a verdict of Wilful Murder against Alfred Inglethorp. What becomes of your theories, then?"
"They would not be shaken because twelve stupid men had happened to make a mistake! -- Agatha Christie
Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary. -- Agatha Christie
...the real tragedy of life was that you got what you wanted... -- Agatha Christie
If you hadn't anything worth saying why go chattering all the time? -- Agatha Christie
What's wrong with Shakespeare?" I{Jerry} inquired in interest.
" Twisting himself up to say things in such a difficult way that you can't get at what he means. Still, I like some Shakespeare. -- Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot was sitting at the breakfast table. At his right hand was a steaming cup -- Agatha Christie
You see," he said sadly, "you have no instincts."
"It was intelligence you were requiring just now," I pointed out.
"The two often go together," said Poirot enigmatically. -- Agatha Christie
Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence? -- Agatha Christie
He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude. -- Agatha Christie
The bereaved had never any doubt about their dear ones' wishes and those wishes usually squared with their own inclinations. -- Agatha Christie
I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps
at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
Those who never think of money need a great deal of it. -- Agatha Christie
A madman is a very dangerous thing. -- Agatha Christie
It is deplorable ... to remove all the romance - all the mystery! -- Agatha Christie
He's not dead. But I have a feeling he's bored. That's worse. -- Agatha Christie
I don't know, I'm sure," said Mrs. Burch. She had said that three times already. Her natural distrust of foreign-looking gentlemen with black moustaches, wearing large fur-lined coats was not to be easily overcome. -- Agatha Christie
The trouble is that practically everything one does nowadays is illegal," said Giles gloomily. "That's why one has a permanent feeling of guilt. -- Agatha Christie
Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?' -- Agatha Christie
It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to. -- Agatha Christie
True to the precepts handed down to her by her mother and grandmother - to wit: that a true lady can neither be shocked nor surprised - Miss Marple merely raised her eyebrows and shook her head, -- Agatha Christie
Just for a moment I hated Lymstock and its narrow boundaries, and its gossiping whispering women. -- Agatha Christie
There! Now we're friends!" declared the minx. "Say you're sorry about my sister -"
"I am desolated!"
"That's a good boy! -- Agatha Christie
But I thought I might have to go to church on Sunday, and although the Archbishop has said one needn't, I still think that the more old-fashioned clergy expect one to wear a hat. But -- Agatha Christie
The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. -- Agatha Christie
If you disperse energy in speech, it doesn't leave you too much over for action. -- Agatha Christie
A slightly uncommon condition of the some-long-word. Nothing at all serious, but it just needs putting right. A simple treatment. -- Agatha Christie
Yes, I like that - loyalty, I mean. It's out of fashion nowadays. She's an odd character, that girl - proud, reserved, stubborn, and terribly warm-hearted underneath, I fancy. -- Agatha Christie
Do you not realize, Hastings, that each and everyone of us is a complete mystery with layers. We each try to judge each other, but nine times out of ten, we are wrong. -- Agatha Christie
But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price. -- Agatha Christie
Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account. -- Agatha Christie
One does see so much evil in a village,' murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. -- Agatha Christie
How absurd to call youth the time of happiness - youth, the time of greatest vulnerability! - Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile -- Agatha Christie
And proceeding to follow the example of the devil in quoting Scripture for his own ends I added: She looketh to the ways of her household ... . -- Agatha Christie
He was clearly marked with the stamp of the Philistine. -- Agatha Christie
Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's finger and say, It all began that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident? -- Agatha Christie
Yes, it was dangerous, but we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an important fellow creature's life is at stake. You understand me? -- Agatha Christie
I suppose what I really am is restless. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. I want to find something. Yes, that's it, I want to find something. -- Agatha Christie
It is fundamentals that matter
not the trappings. (Alice Cunningham) -- Agatha Christie
The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple. -- Agatha Christie
There's no reason why women shouldn't behave like rational beings," Simon asserted stolidly.
Poirot said drily: "Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting! -- Agatha Christie
Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has. -- Agatha Christie
It is romantic, you know, the transatlantic telephone. To speak so easily to someone nearly halfway across the globe. The telegraphed photograph - that, too, is romantic. Science is the greatest romance there is. -- Agatha Christie
What are you doing this afternoon, Griselda?" "My duty," said Griselda. "My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four thirty. -- Agatha Christie
Trains are wonderful ... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life. -- Agatha Christie
Six people were thinking of Rosemary Barton who had died nearly a year ago ... -- Agatha Christie
You know I want you. You know that I'd give my soul to pick you up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, forever and ever. -- Agatha Christie
You are, I think, a little bit contemptuous of the way I prosecute my inquiries, he said with a twinkle. -- Agatha Christie
If you ask me, nobody really likes people who are always doing their duty. -- Agatha Christie
Monsieur, pray confine yourself to the point. -- Agatha Christie
It would mean a good film, the story that you have recounted to me there - but it bears no sort of resemblance to everyday life.'
'I admit that I haven't gone into all the details, but-'
'You have gone farther - you have ignored them magnificently. -- Agatha Christie
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
-The Last Seance (from The Hound of Death and Other Stories, also Double Sin and Other Stories) -- Agatha Christie
there isn't such a thing as a murderer who commits crimes at random. Either he removes people who stand (however insignificantly) in his path, or else he kills by conviction. -- Agatha Christie
The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself. -- Agatha Christie
Our weapon is our knowledge. But remember, it may be a knowledge we may not know that we possess. -- Agatha Christie
Curious, sometimes, how one's thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern. -- Agatha Christie
And for five long hours the little man sat motionless, blinking his eyelids like a cat, his green eyes flickering and becoming steadily greener and greener. -- Agatha Christie
I have always admired the Esquimaux (Eskimos). One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice, and doesn't come back. -- Agatha Christie
There is no fanatic like a religious fanatic. -- Agatha Christie
For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away ... -- Agatha Christie
When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so. -- Agatha Christie
Of course I despise money when I haven't got any. It's the only dignified thing to do. -- Agatha Christie
What an awful place to live in England is, ... If it isn't snowing or raining or blowing it's misty. And if the sun does shine it's so cold that you can't feel your fingers or toes. -- Agatha Christie
Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it. -- Agatha Christie
What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn't talk gardening or dogs - those standbys of rural conversation. -- Agatha Christie
I help those who can help themselves. -- Agatha Christie
Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind. -- Agatha Christie
Exactly. Au revoir!" Whittington -- Agatha Christie
A secret de Polichinelle is a secret that everyone can know. For this reason the people who do not know it never hear about it - for if everyone thinks you know a thing, nobody tells you. -- Agatha Christie
East Africa. Had Lance been deliberately misleading when he said West instead of East? Miss -- Agatha Christie
Everything has got its right size. When it is its right size and well run it's the tops. -- Agatha Christie
It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing! -- Agatha Christie
There was a moment's stupefied silence. Japp, who was the least surprised of any of us, was the first to speak. -- Agatha Christie
He thought: Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther ... you've come to the end of things ... . He knew, suddenly, that he didn't want to leave the island. VI -- Agatha Christie
Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend. -- Agatha Christie
All three wore the air of superiority assumed by people who are already in a place when studying new arrivals. -- Agatha Christie
Wherever there is human nature, there is drama. -- Agatha Christie
You know, you're the sort of woman who ought to be raped. It might do you good -- Agatha Christie
I'm not the head of Scotland Yard," said Mrs. Oliver, retreating from dangerous ground. "I'm a private individual -"
"Oh, you're not that," said Rhoda, confusedly complimentary. -- Agatha Christie
I'm sure you have a theme: the theme of your life. You can embellish it or desecrate it, but it's your theme, and as long as you follow it, you will experience harmony and peace of mind. -- Agatha Christie
If you must be Sherlock Holmes," she observed, "I'll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled cocaine, but for God's sake leave that violin alone. -- Agatha Christie
If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. -- Agatha Christie
Down the steep track into the village a car was coming. A car so fantastically powerful, so superlatively beautiful that it had all the nature of an apparition. -- Agatha Christie
Because, you see, if the man were an invention - a fabrication - how much easier to make him disappear! -- Agatha Christie
I think a woman smothered in cheap scent is one of the greatest abominations known to mankind - Lord Mayfield -- Agatha Christie
But it wasn't really scandals Miss Marple wanted. Nothing to get your teeth into in scandals nowadays. Just men and women changing partners, and calling attention to it, instead of trying decently to hush it up and be properly ashamed of themselves. -- Agatha Christie
That is what I mean. A bath! The receptacle of porcelain, one turns the taps and fills it, one gets in, one gets out and ghoosh - ghoosh - ghoosh, the water goes down the waste pipe!"
"M. Poirot are you quite mad?"
"No, I am extremely sane. -- Agatha Christie
There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one. -- Agatha Christie
Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide. -- Agatha Christie
There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! ... A human being, Hastings, cannot resist theopportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away. -- Agatha Christie
Everybody is very much alike, really. But fortunately, perhaps, they don't realise it. - Miss Marple -- Agatha Christie
There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true. -- Agatha Christie
But Amyas was like all the Crales, a ruthless egoist. He loved Caroline but he never once considered her in any way. He did as he pleased. -- Agatha Christie
I felt a distinct pleasure in passing on my own discomfiture. -- Agatha Christie
Poirot and I behaved in the customary fashion of people being shown over houses. We stood stock still, looking a little ill at ease, murmuring remarks such as: "Very nice." "A very pleasant room." "The morning-room, you say? -- Agatha Christie
Poor Emily was never murdered until he came along. -- Agatha Christie
I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me. -- Agatha Christie
Ah! Madame, I reserve the explanations for the last chapter. -- Agatha Christie
I always take abroad with me one really good soft pillow
to me it makes all the difference between comfort and misery. -- Agatha Christie
Mrs. McGinty's dead..how did she die?
down on one knee..just like I
mrs. McGinty's dead..how did she die?
holding her hand out..just like I
mrs. McGinty's dead.. how did she die?
sticking her neck out..just like I -- Agatha Christie
I daresay idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn't it. -- Agatha Christie
Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. You shouldn't really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it - but all the same it will lead to trouble. -- Agatha Christie
I've never met a murderer who wasn't vain ... It's their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten.They may be frightened of being caught, but they can't help strutting and boasting and usually they're sure they've been far too clever to be caught. -- Agatha Christie
But I believe in luck - in destiny, if you will. It is your destiny to stand beside me and prevent me from committing the unforgivable error."
"What do you call the unforgivable error?"
"Overlooking the obvious.! -- Agatha Christie
nice people like to preserve their niceness. Years -- Agatha Christie
Juliet singles out Romeo. Desdemona claims Othello. They have no doubts, the young, no fear, no pride. -- Agatha Christie
Very unfortunately, she had no husband. She had never had a husband, and therefore did not kill a husband. -- Agatha Christie
At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true. -- Agatha Christie
Death in the Clouds -- Agatha Christie
Mrs. Bantry reflected a minute and then applied an urgent conjugal elbow to her sleeping spouse. -- Agatha Christie
One has to dare if one wants to get anywhere,' said Mrs. Bantry. -- Agatha Christie
You agree - I'm sure you agree that beauty is the only thing worth living for. -- Agatha Christie
The great merit of being a doctor," said Sir Bartholomew, "is that you are not obliged to follow your own advice. -- Agatha Christie
I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous. -- Agatha Christie
Your not reliable. You wouldn't be at all a comfortable sort of person to live with. -- Agatha Christie
Pas encore. Qa m'amuse."
"Really, Poirot!"
"Yes, my friend. I grow old and childish, do I not? -- Agatha Christie
And suddenly, with a terrific shock, with that feeling as of blurring on a cinematograph screen before the picture comes to focus, Hercule Poirot realized that this artificially set scene had a point of reality ... -- Agatha Christie
A meal should always lie lightly on the estomac," said Poirot. "It should not be so heavy as to paralyze thought. -- Agatha Christie
That is the worst of Poirot. Order and Method are his gods. He goes so far as to attribute all his success to them. -- Agatha Christie
I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language. -- Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot addressed himself to the task of keeping his moustaches out of the soup. -- Agatha Christie
It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violences for the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely. (Hercule Poirot) -- Agatha Christie
Alas," murmured Poirot to his mustaches, "that one can only eat three times a day ... -- Agatha Christie
Why, he's Hercule Poirot! You know who I mean - the private detective. They say he's done the most wonderful things - just like detectives do in books. -- Agatha Christie
Rest assured," said Hercule Poirot. "I am the best! -- Agatha Christie
I should hope, Mr. Poirot, that whatever our feelings, we can keep them in decent control. And we can certainly control our actions. -- Agatha Christie
If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything. -- Agatha Christie
Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot -- Agatha Christie
Difficulties are made to be overcome ~ Miss Felicity Lemon, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Plymouth Express -- Agatha Christie
Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived. -- Agatha Christie
Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy. -- Agatha Christie
But when you say crazy, that describes very well what the general appearance may be to ordinary, everyday people. -- Agatha Christie
I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself. -- Agatha Christie
Archaeologists only look at what lies beneath their feet. The sky and the heavens don't exist for them. -- Agatha Christie
Got on! Got on! It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success. -- Agatha Christie
My friend, in working upon a case, one does not take into account only the things that are "mentioned". There is no reason to mention many things which may be important. Equally, there is often an excellent reason for not mentioning them. -- Agatha Christie
Perhaps it was, what you don't realize, my dear (not having killed anyone) our judgement is distorted afterward and everything seems exaggerated. -- Agatha Christie
And briefly and succinctly, he put Miss Marple's theory of the crime before the doctor, ending up with her final suggestion. -- Agatha Christie
Mary Jordan did not die naturally. It was one of us, I think I know which one. -- Agatha Christie
I mean, what can you say about how you write your books? What I mean is, first you've got to think of something, and then when you've thought of it you've got to force yourself to sit down and write it. That's all." ~ Mrs. Oliver -- Agatha Christie
But it is one of the great consolations in nature that a man, however unattractive, will find that he is attractive - to some woman. -- Agatha Christie
Ah, but you must have a Christmas uncomplicated by murder. -- Agatha Christie
These blondes, sir, they're responsible for a lot of trouble. -- Agatha Christie
When youth begins to pass, fun isn't fun any longer. -- Agatha Christie
Life itself is an unsolved mystery, said the clergyman gravely. -- Agatha Christie
Let me take this opportunity of thanking you, mother, for all the sacrifices you have made for us -- Agatha Christie
Some of us, in the words of the divine Greta Garbo, want to be alone. -- Agatha Christie
It's quite possible that the delusions of today may be the proved scientific facts of tomorrow. -- Agatha Christie
But Aunt Maureen makes smashing omelettes." Julia Upjohn.
"She makes smashing omelettes." Poirot's voice was happy. He sighed.
"Then Hercule Poirot has not lived in vain, he said. It was I who taught your Aunt Maureen to make an omelette. -- Agatha Christie
The tragedy of life is that people do not change. -- Agatha Christie
An appreciative listener is always stimulating. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
Women are fiends-absolute fiends. -- Agatha Christie
Ye Gods and Little Fishes," said Sir Henry, "can it be? George, it's my own particular, one and only four starred Pussy. The super Pussy of all old Pussies... -- Agatha Christie
If I were dead, the first thing you'd do, with the tears streaming down your face, would be to start modelling some damned mourning woman or some figure of grief. -- Agatha Christie
I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest. -- Agatha Christie
In my end is my beginning - that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean? -- Agatha Christie
Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world? -- Agatha Christie
I can look after her all right, sir," said Tommy, at exactly the same minute as Tuppence said, "I can take care of myself. -- Agatha Christie
People in the dark are quite different, aren't they? -- Agatha Christie
The out-of-date returns in due course as the picturesque. -- Agatha Christie
Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her. -- Agatha Christie
Don't be offended because I think you're young. Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown. -- Agatha Christie
As far as it is possible for one upright Christian gentleman to dislike another upright Christian gentleman, Lord Caterham disliked the Hon. George Lomax. -- Agatha Christie
It is a grief to Sir Gervase, yes, that he has no son to inherit his name? -- Agatha Christie
Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows. -- Agatha Christie
Use that fluff of yours you call a brain. -- Agatha Christie
Sentimentality, Mrs Revel. You know it is. Love isn't a drug that you take to blind you to your surroundings - you can make it that, yes, but it's a pity - love can be a lot more than that. -- Agatha Christie
For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house! -- Agatha Christie
Ah, but my dear sir, the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point. -- Agatha Christie
He has neither what I call the outward vision (seeing details all around you what is called an observant person) nor the inner vision
concentration, the focusing of the mind on one object. He has a purposefully limited vision. He sees only what blends and harmonises with the bent of his mind. -- Agatha Christie
Mr Rycroft said nothing. It was so difficult not to say the wrong thing to Captain Wyatt that it was usually safer not to reply at all. -- Agatha Christie
Obsessions are always dangerous. -- Agatha Christie
Ah, mais c'est Anglais ca," he murmured, "everything in black and white, everything clear cut and well defined. But life, it is not like that, Mademoiselle. There are things that are not yet, but which cast their shadow before. -- Agatha Christie
Living alone, with no one to consult or talk to, one might easily become melodramatic, and imagine things which had no foundation on fact. -- Agatha Christie
Tuppence had once laid upon him a serious injunction. ' If anybody over the age of sixty-five finds fault with you,' she said, 'never argue. Never try to say you're right. Apologize at once and say it was all your fault and you're very sorry and you'll never do it again. -- Agatha Christie
The heart of a woman who loves will forgive many blows. -- Agatha Christie
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? -- Agatha Christie
One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers. -- Agatha Christie
The world is full of good people who do bad things! -- Agatha Christie
was a natural one? I have come across certain evidence today -- Agatha Christie
They are never really dead, these super criminals -- Agatha Christie
Every one made such a fuss over things nowadays! They wanted injections before they had teeth pulled -they took drugs if they couldn't sleep-they wanted easy chairs and cushions and the girls allowed their figures to slop about anyhow and lay about half naked on the beaches in summer. -- Agatha Christie
And if you cast down an idol, there's nothing left. -- Agatha Christie
What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed. -- Agatha Christie
It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth! -- Agatha Christie
When you find that people are not telling you the truth
look out! -- Agatha Christie
Death was temporary, lasting only long enough to provoke a laugh from kids in pajamas sitting cross-legged in front of the TV set, gorging themselves on handfuls of Froot Loops. -- Agatha Christie
I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That's always a help, you know. It's bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves. -- Agatha Christie
Truth, however bitter, can be accepted, and woven into a design for living. -- Agatha Christie
Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind. -- Agatha Christie
Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?
Miss Bulstrode's thoughts. -- Agatha Christie
There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. -- Agatha Christie
Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they've seen it often before. -- Agatha Christie
There is nothing more cruel than talk, and there is nothing more difficult to combat. When people say things behind your back there is nothing you can refute or deny, and the rumours go on growing and growing, and no one can stop them. -- Agatha Christie
I don't particularly want to think of your funeral because I'd much prefer to die before you do. But I mean, if I were going to your funeral, at any rate it would be an orgy of grief. I should take a lot of handkerchiefs. -- Agatha Christie
A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was de trop. -- Agatha Christie
The spoken word and the written - there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the meaning. -- Agatha Christie
I believe the present matters
not the past! The past muust go. If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms
a false perspective. - Hilda Lee -- Agatha Christie
Only mothers can't say they don't want their children and just go away. -- Agatha Christie
It is well at any price to have peace in the home. -- Agatha Christie
The truth is never horrible, only interesting. -- Agatha Christie
The trouble is, that this sort of things once it starts, grows. -- Agatha Christie
It's awfully easy to appear silly, Mr. Clement. It's one of the easiest things in the world. -- Agatha Christie
The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years. -- Agatha Christie
Proof must be solid break walls of facts. -- Agatha Christie
Not selfish things, not things for herself; who could give to unwanted children love, care, a home. All these things she could buy for them, but not their love for her. Then -- Agatha Christie
Time goes a different pace in different places. Some places you come back to, and you feel that time has been busting along at a terrific rate and that all sorts of things will have happened - and changed. -- Agatha Christie
May your moustaches never grow less. -- Agatha Christie
To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived.. -- Agatha Christie
One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer. -- Agatha Christie
The old gentleman refuses to have the telephone which he regards as a device of the devil, and on a par with radio, television, cinema organs and jet planes, so I had to take a chance of finding him at home. -- Agatha Christie
Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject. -- Agatha Christie
Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
I suppose, like most young people nowadays, boredom is what you dread most in the world, and yet, I can assure you, there are worse things. -- Agatha Christie
Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know. -- Agatha Christie
You should always pay attention to your instincts. -- Agatha Christie
You're a man milliner, Poirot. I never notice what people have on."
"You should join a nudist colony -- Agatha Christie
Faces are tricky unless you can connect up when and where you'd seen them. -- Agatha Christie
Child's evidence is always the best evidence there is. I'd rely on it every time. No good in court, of course. Children can't stand being asked direct questions. They mumble or else look idiotic and say they don't know. They're at their best when they're showing off. -- Agatha Christie
If she'd been born in an African tribe she might have been a witch doctor. -- Agatha Christie
If you've lost, you've lost. -- Agatha Christie
Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity. -- Agatha Christie
If thing is as clear as daylight, mistrust it! someone has made it so! -- Agatha Christie
Suppose if something very terrible had happened, so terrible as to be almost unbearable, one might get like that. One might run away from reality into a half world of one's own and then, of course, after a time, one wouldn't be able to get back ... -- Agatha Christie
It's a mystery to me how anyone ever gets any nourishment in this place. They must eat their meals standing up by the window so as to be sure of not missing anything. -- Agatha Christie
Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them. -- Agatha Christie
Those words of hers had meant nothing - you could not dismiss [however] a human being so easily. -- Agatha Christie
Every one's got their own ways of working. I know that. I give my inspectors a free hand always. Every one's got to find out for themselves what method suits them best. -- Agatha Christie
Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No reasonable offer refused. -- Agatha Christie
Death is for other people. -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
Retired soldiers are the worst sufferers when they engage in financial operations. I have found that their credulity far exceeds that of widows--and that is saying a good deal. -- Agatha Christie
Family strength is a marvellous thing. -- Agatha Christie
Perhaps George is going to be assassinated," said Lord Caterham hopefully. "What do you think, Bundle-perhaps I'd better go after all. -- Agatha Christie
Too much mercy ... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second. -- Agatha Christie
Fortunately words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of naked facts. -- Agatha Christie
Human nature, dear, is very much the same everywhere. It is more difficult to observe it closely in a city, that is all. -- Agatha Christie
Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity. -- Agatha Christie
Two people rarely see the same thing. -- Agatha Christie
The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter. -- Agatha Christie
I do think you should be more careful how you choose your friends. You are so credulous, dear, so easily gulled. I suppose it is being a writer and having so much imagination. If you were older and had more experience of life you would have been on guard at once. -- Agatha Christie
I have no pity for myself either. So let it be Veronal. But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows. -- Agatha Christie
Never tell all you know - not even to the person you know best. -- Agatha Christie
This is no time for refusing to look facts in the face. -- Agatha Christie
People are capable of surprising one frightfully. One gets an idea of them into one's head, and sometimes it's absolutely wrong. Not always - but sometimes. -- Agatha Christie
Heart failure, it explains nothing! I have yet to meet a corpse whose heart it still beats. -- Agatha Christie
The amount of women you hear say, "If Donald - or Arthur - or whatever his name was - had only lived." And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not. -- Agatha Christie
Ulick Norman Owen - Una Nancy Owen - each time, that is to say, U. N. Owen. Or by a slight stretch of fancy, UNKNOWN! -- Agatha Christie
... 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. -- Agatha Christie
Oh, my dear friend, it is impossible not to give oneself away - unless one never opens one's mouth! Speech is the deadliest of revealers. -- Agatha Christie
It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period. -- Agatha Christie
En voiture, Monsieur,' said the Wagon Lit conductor. -- Agatha Christie
E: When one has at last reached freedom, can one even contemplate going back?
HC: But if it is not possible to go back, or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom!
~Ericsson; Hilary Craven -- Agatha Christie
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody. -- Agatha Christie
I have wanted ... to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! ... But-incongruous as it may seem to some-I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer. -- Agatha Christie
once a weak person gets really frightened, they get quite savage with terror and they've no self-control at all. -- Agatha Christie
The eye is diverted from the real business, it is caught by the spectacular action that means nothing
nothing at all. -- Agatha Christie
The first time you do a thing is always exciting. -- Agatha Christie
If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow. -- Agatha Christie
With thought, all problems can be resolved. -- Agatha Christie
You know, 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. -- Agatha Christie
But after a while they stopped talking about her and discussed instead who was going to win the Grand National. For, as Mr Ferguson was saying at that minute in Luxor, it is not the past that matters but the future. -- Agatha Christie
She's had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil. -- Agatha Christie
Decidedly it was the policy of an imbecile. -- Agatha Christie
If you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs. -- Agatha Christie
A man in drink can be like a ravening wolf. -- Agatha Christie
Never part with information unnecessarily. That's my rule, -- Agatha Christie
You're very young ... you haven't got to that yet. But it does come! The blessed relief when you know that you've done with it all - that you haven't got to carry the burden any longer. You'll feel that too someday ... -- Agatha Christie
Exactly! It is absurd - improbable - it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts. -- Agatha Christie
At first, I was polite. Really. I said "excuse me," I tried to squeeze through gaps, even apologized for stepping on some toes. What can I say, I'm Canadian. -- Agatha Christie
What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions. -- Agatha Christie
Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking. -- Agatha Christie
Death in the Clouds The -- Agatha Christie
They wish not to become adult - not to have to accept our kind of responsibility. And yet like all children, they want to be thought grown up, and free to do what they think are grown up things. And that leads sometimes to tragedy and sometimes to the aftermath of tragedy. -- Agatha Christie
To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life. -- Agatha Christie
I did not tell you that Helena Andrenyi was Mrs. Armstrong's sister? -- Agatha Christie
I've become a killer of the Lord. It's the Lord's will that I should kill you. So that makes it all right. You do see that, don't you? You see, it makes it all right. -- Agatha Christie
Oh no, I'm not brave. When a thing is certain there's nothing to be brave about. All you can do is to find your consolation. -- Agatha Christie
Mr. Satterthwaite's conversation was apt to be unduly burdened by mentions of his titled acquaintances. -- Agatha Christie
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it. -- Agatha Christie
If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off. -- Agatha Christie
Everyone's life has a tempo. Ruth's was presto whereas Miss Marple's was content to be adagio. -- Agatha Christie
I've got an uncle myself. Nobody should be held responsible for their uncles. Nature's little throwbacks - that's how I look at it. -- Agatha Christie
To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious. -- Agatha Christie
Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts.
-The Blood-Stained Pavement -- Agatha Christie
No one human being knows the full truth about another human being. Not even one's nearest and dearest. -- Agatha Christie
I've heard that you're the cat's whiskers, M. Poirot."
"Comment? The cat's whiskers? I do not understand."
"Well that you're It."
"Madame, I may or may not have brains - as a matter of fact I have - why pretend? -- Agatha Christie
It's a rotten job, but somebody's got to do it. -- Agatha Christie
The Captain's habit of letting off a revolver at real or imaginary cats was a sore trial to his neighbours. -- Agatha Christie
Getting soft - that's the curse of the present day. -- Agatha Christie
All this red tape and form-filling. That's what comes of a bureaucratic state. Can't go where you like and do as you please anymore! Somebody's always asking questions. -- Agatha Christie
There's a saying by some great writer or other that no man is a hero to his valet. Perhaps everyone ought to have a valet. -- Agatha Christie
I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk. -- Agatha Christie
It's all very well to talk like that," said Mr. Rafiel. "We, you say? What do you think I can do about it? I can't even walk without help. How can you and I set about preventing a murder? You're about a hundred and I'm a broken-up old crock. -- Agatha Christie
But speaking of Tennyson, have you read Maud?" "Once, long ago." "It's got some points about it." He quoted softly: "'Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null. -- Agatha Christie
How often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true! And I think if, as I say, they really examined the facts they would find that it was true nine times out of ten! That's really just what makes people so annoyed about it. -- Agatha Christie
You can only really get under anybody's skin if you are married to them. -- Agatha Christie
For, once there's a death, one doesn't like to think there's been harsh words spoken and no chance of taking them back. -- Agatha Christie
No woman respects a man when he's doing a thing thoroughly badly. -- Agatha Christie
One's own troubles sharpen one's eyes sometimes. -- Agatha Christie
I wouldn't go so far as to say I've got a plan. But I've got an idea. It's a very useful thing sometimes, an idea. - Superintendent Battle -- Agatha Christie
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. -- Agatha Christie
It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy. -- Agatha Christie
But nothing will suit him now but the best! He's got on wonderfully, and naturally he wants something to show for it, but many's the time I wonder where it will end. -- Agatha Christie
you've no idea of the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things that they never would have said, and do things that they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it's 'good theatre. -- Agatha Christie
Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly. -- Agatha Christie
Well, of course, it was not any of my business but you get very queer glimpses of life sometimes, and you can't help speculating about them. -- Agatha Christie
Whether he acted rightly or not, I have never been sure. It was the future of a child that was at stake. A child, he felt, ought to be given the benefit of a doubt. -- Agatha Christie
Mr. Beresford put down the Daily Mail, which he was reading, and applauded with somewhat unnecessary vigour. He was politely requested by his colleague not to be an ass. -- Agatha Christie
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell a soul.'
'People who use that phrase are always the last to live up to it. -- Agatha Christie
Yew berries?" "Berries or leaves. Highly poisonous. Taxine, of course, is the alkaloid. -- Agatha Christie
Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop ... suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head. -- Agatha Christie
A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life. -- Agatha Christie
Calgary sighed. Things were never, he thought, the way you imagined them to be. Every day he found himself less attracted to the man whose name he had taken such trouble to vindicate. He was almost coming to understand and share the point of view which had so astounded him at Sunny Point. -- Agatha Christie
Do a thing well then leave it alone . -- Agatha Christie
It was not