Quotes from Agatha Christie

Some of us, in the words of the divine Greta Garbo, want to be alone.

How can I go on living here and suspecting everybody ?

Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot

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...

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.

A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man. (Inspector Miller)

One never quite allows for the moron in our midst.

When will a woman lie? Sometimes for herself. Usually for the man she loves. Always for her children.

The world is full of good people who do bad things!

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?

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.

When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. [...] The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour." He paused. "It's Zero Hour now.

They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.

Ah! Madame, I reserve the explanations for the last chapter.

Fortunately words, ingeniously used, will serve to mask the ugliness of naked facts.

I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn't it?

If the little grey cells are not exercised, they grow the rust.

The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One does not live because one's reason assents to living. People who, as we say, 'would be better dead,' don't want to die! People who apparently have got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they have not got the energy to fight.

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

No innocent person ever has an alibi.

Alas," murmured Poirot to his mustaches, "that one can only eat three times a day ...

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.

There is no telling what a human character is. Until the test comes. To most of us the test comes early in life. A man is confronted quite soon with the necessity to stand on his own feet, to face dangers and difficulties and to take his own line of dealing with them. It may be the straight way, it may be the crooked way --- whichever it is, a man usually learns early just what he is made of.

The truth is people are an extraordinary mixture of heroism and cowardice.