Quotes from Agatha Christie

Men have courage-one knows that...but they are more easily deceived than women.

I always feel that young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they've whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.

The only clue to what is in people's minds is in their behavior. If a man behaves strangely, oddly, is not himself-- Then you suspect him? No. That is just what I mean. A man whose mind is evil and whose intentions are evil is conscious of that fact and he knows that he must conceal it all costs. He dare not, therefore, afford any unusual behavior.

What a newspaper prints is news – but not always truth!

Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier)

She could not fail to observe that a life of academic distinction was singularly ill rewarded. She had no desire whatever to teach and she took pleasure in contacts with minds much less brilliant than her own. In short, she had a taste for people, all sorts of people—and not the same people the whole time.

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.

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.

Present­ly, when the strain re­laxed, Blore said: 'There are habits and habits! Mr. Lom­bard takes a re­volver to out-?of-?the-way places, right enough, and a primus and a sleep­ing-?bag and a sup­ply of bug pow­der, no doubt! But habit wouldn't make him bring the whole out­fit down here? It's on­ly in books peo­ple car­ry re­volvers around as a matter of course.' Dr. Arm­strong shook his head per­plexed­ly.

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.

She's had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil.

Meanwhile we have learnt something, and to know is to be prepared.

But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep. Now whenever that young man looked he looked like a sheep I take back all is this morning. It is genuine.

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

If you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs.

In moments of great stress, the mind focuses itself upon some quite unimportant matter which is remembered long afterwards with the utmost fidelity, driven in, as it were, by the mental stress of the moment. It may be some quite irrelevant detail, like the pattern of a wallpaper, but it will never be forgotten.

I think there's something heavenly about numbers, anyway.

But all the same, it is true what I say--artificial conditions bring about their natural reaction.

You seem to know a hell of a lot about everything, you little foreign cock duck.

It's odd, isn't it, why farce so often seems to get mixed up with tragedy?

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.

There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person [she] was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that spring the necessity of our questions.

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.