Quotes by Agatha Christie

“I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains.”

“Liking is more important than loving. It lasts. I want what is between us to last, Luke. I don't want us just to love each other and marry and get tired of each other and then want to marry some one else.""Oh! my dear Love, I know. You want reality. So do I. What's between us will last for ever because it's founded on reality.”

“People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something. I've known many an invalid who has suffered worse and been cut off from life much more . . . and they've managed to lead happy contented lives. It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.”

“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....”

“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]”

“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)”

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”

“It is 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.”

“There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.”

“But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.”

“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.”

“There was something magical about an island—the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world—an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.”

“Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. [Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]”

“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”

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”

“To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.[author's dedication]”

“You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”

“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”

“I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.”

“But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.”

“It is really a 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.”

“What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett.”

“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.”

“Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.”

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.”

“Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill-though not the will to kill.”

“One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.”

“It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot”

“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”

“There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

“Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.”

“The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”

“The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.”

“If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.”

“I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea....”

“The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.”

“Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture. Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.”

“It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.”

“Our weapon is our knowledge. But remember, it may be a knowledge we may not know that we possess.”

“Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.”

“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.”

“Love can be a very frightening thing.’ ‘That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”

“One little Indian left all alone, he went out and hanged himself and then there were none.”

“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”

“Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.”

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking.""An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”

“One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.”

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.”

“Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.”

“I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.”

“A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.”

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

“When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.”

“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.”

“When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!”

“It had come about ex­act­ly in the way things hap­pened in books.”

“One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.”

“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.”

“But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.”

“If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.”

“Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”

“At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.”

“I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.”

“Words, madmoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”

“They tried to be too clever---and that was their undoing.”

“People should be interested in books, not their authors.”

“To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.”

“...You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.”

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”

“One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.”

“To every problem, there is a most simple solution.”

“Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.”

“I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue.”

“An appreciative listener is always stimulating.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“What good is money if it can't buy happiness?”

“Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!”

“You should employ your little grey cells”

“In the midst of life, we are in death.”

“Very few of us are what we seem.”

“Fear is incomplete knowledge”

“Time is the best killer.”