Agatha Christie

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

I think I said that every generation had its weaklings--that that was one of the penalties of greatness--but that their failings were seldom remembered by posterity.

I think you are wise. You haven't got what it takes for this job. You are like Rosemary's father. He couldn't understand Lenin's dictum: 'Away with softness.'"I thought of Hercule Poirot's words."I'm content," I said, "to be human...."We sat there in silence, each of use convinced that the other's point of view was wrong.

Sixty-nine was an interesting age--an age of infinite possibilities--an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old--that was different, a tired, discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all? A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died...

The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

Sometimes what you think is an end is only a beginning. And that wouldn't do at all.

What I think is a different matter. Maybe I think some rather curious things__ut until thinking's got you somewhere it's no use talking about it.

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

A meal should always lie lightly on the estomac," said Poirot. "It should not be so heavy as to paralyze thought.

Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide.

A man in love is an awful sight.

When a man's neck's in danger, he doesn't stop to think too much aboutsentiment.

Men don't want to be brothers - they may someday, but they don't now. My belief in the brotherhood of man died the day I arrived in London last week, when I observed the people standing in a Tube train resolutely refuse to move up and make room for those who entered. You won't turn people into angels by appealing to their better natures just yet awhile - but by judicious force you can coerce them into behaving more or less decently to one another to go on with. I will still believe in the brotherhood of man, but it's not coming yet awhile. Say another ten thousand years or so. It's no good being impatient. Evolution is a slow process.

I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That's always a help, you know. It's bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves.

I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.

Youth is a failing only tooeasily outgrown.

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.

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.