Agatha Christie

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

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

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.

To every problem, there is a most simple solution.

You don't appreciate a faithful husband when you've got one,' said Tommy.'All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,' said Tuppance.'You have the wrong kind of friends,' said Tommy.

Vous eprouves trop d'emotion, Hastings, It affects your hands and your wits. Is that a way to fold a coat? And regard what you have done to my pyjamas. If the hairwash breaks what will befall them?''Good heavens, Poirot,' I cried, 'this is a matter of life and death. What does it matter what happens to our clothes?''You have no sense of proportion Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder.

Use that fluff of yours you call a brain.

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.

No one human being knows the full truth about another human being. Not even one's nearest and dearest.

The truth is, that one doesn't really know anything about anybody. Not even the people who are nearest to you...''Isn't that going a little too far--exaggerating too much?''I don't think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have made of them for yourself.

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.

In fact there is only your own instinct?Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge-my experience-that tells me that something about that letter is wrong-

One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.

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.

There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.

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

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.