Quotes from Agatha Christie

It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!

Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," he observed as he sniffed round our ankles. "Excuse the noise, won't you, but I have my job to do. Got to be careful who we let in, you know. But it's a dull life and I'm really quite pleased to see a visitor. Dogs of your own, I fancy?

Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish, To set before the king. The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey. The maid was in the garden, Hanging out the clothes, When down came a blackbird And pecked off her nose.

the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilized body

One must seek the truth within – not without.

She didn't want to die. She couldn't imagine wanting to die…Death was for—for other people.

Really, I have no gifts—no gifts at all—except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature. People, I find, are apt to be far too trustful. I'm afraid that I have a tendency always to believe the worst. Not a nice trait. But so often justified by subsequent events.

By Jove, Poirot,' I exclaimed, 'did you see that young goddess?' Poirot

The eye is diverted from the real business, it is caught by the spectacular action that means nothing--nothing at all.

Now we can talk," said Poirot. "When I say that, I mean, really, that I shall talk.

Oude zonden hebben lange schaduwen.

She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. Wonderful luck that was, Mrs. Oliver thought to herself.

To dear Peter, most faithful of friends and dearest of companions, a dog in a thousand

Such people forget that life and death are the affair of the good God.

Thought is yours only. Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it.

It is really a very hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.

I'm not very good at telling things. I mean if I write things, I get them perfectly clear, but if I talk, it always sounds the most frightful muddle.

After you've fallen in love with a man and married him and got used to his ways and settled down comfortably—to go and throw it all up and start again! It seems to me madness.

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...

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.

They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation. And all of them, suddenly, looked less like human beings. They were reverting to more bestial types.

The Kiddles had come and conquered. Life was stronger than death.

You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.

Mademoiselle, se non è sposata, vuol dire che nessuno del mio sesso è stato abbastanza eloquente: per scelta e non per necessità, si resta nubili.