Quotes from 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.

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.

What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking.

Inestimable harm may be done by foolish wagging of tongues in ill-natured gossip

Yes, he is intelligent. But we must be more intelligent. We must be so intelligent that he does not suspect us of being intelligent at all." I acquiesced. "There, mon ami, you will be of great assistance to me." I was pleased with the compliment. There had been times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth. "Yes" he continued staring at me thoughtfully, "you will be invaluable

One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. you would not see it with the same eyes-even supposing that it should improbably have remained much the same. What you have had you have had. 'The happy highways where I went, And shall not come again...' Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking.

A statesman in these days has a difficult task. He has to pursue the policy he deems advantageous to his country, but he has at the same time to recognize the force of popular feeling. Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddleheaded, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that.

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.

What are murderers like? Some of them, have been thoroughly nice chaps.

Because, you see, if the man were an invention—a fabrication—how much easier to make him disappear!

These blondes, sir, they're responsible for a lot of trouble.

I had the firm conviction that, if I went about looking for adventure, adventure would meet me halfway. It is a theory of mine that one always gets what one wants.

That's where all the trouble in life comes from. Thinking.

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.

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

They say all the world loves a lover—apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth.

I will not look through keyholes," I interrupted hotly. Poirot closed his eyes. "Very well, then. You will not look through keyholes. You will remain the English gentleman and someone will be killed.

What alchemy there was in human beings.

Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.

Use your eyes. Use your ears. Use your brains---if you've got any. And, if necessary--act.

Hercule Poirot's methods are his own. Order and method, and 'the little gray cells'.

Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

I love autumn. It's so much richer than spring.