Agatha Christie

Hasting - There are times when it is one's duty to assert oneself.

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods.

Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm, but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack - not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She though always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.

Difficulties are made to be overcome ~ Miss Felicity Lemon, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Plymouth Express

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

I am all that there is of the most real.

Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.

Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.

Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.

You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?' You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.' That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

As you yourself have said, what other explanation can there be?' Poirot stared straight ahead of him. 'That is what I ask myself,' he said. 'That is what I never cease to ask myself.

I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.

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]

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.

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

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

An appreciative listener is always stimulating.

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

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?

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