Agatha Christie Quotations

These little grey cells. It is up to them.

Very few of us are what we seem.

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.

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

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

I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

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.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

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

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

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

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

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

Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

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.

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.

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

I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

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.

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

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

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.

Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't, luckily, have to bother about that.

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Fear is incomplete knowledge

You want beauty,' said Hercules Poirot. 'Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth. I want always truth.

Time does not dispose of a question - it only presents it anew in a different guise.

Books are a habit-forming drug.

An appreciative listener is always stimulating.

The tragedy of life is that people do not change.

That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.

And so could you know it if you would only use the brains the good God has given you. Sometimes I really am tempted to believe that by inadvertence, He passed you by.

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

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

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.

In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth! (Hercule Poirot)

all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or for their best friend.

You're shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this - they always think the worst!

I learned ... 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?

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

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age. ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live.

The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.

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

There's nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation.

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

I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.

If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid.

Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.

fiction is founded on truth....unless things did happen,people couldn't think of them.

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

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

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. 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, 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]

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.

It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violences for the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely. (Hercule Poirot)

a lot of trouble has been caused by memoirs. Indiscreet revelations, that sort of thing. People who have been close as an oyster all their lives seem positively to relish causing trouble when they themselves shall be comfortably dead.

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.

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.

I married an archeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One doesn't 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 everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they haven't got the energy to fight.

... there are many to whom money has no personal appeal, but who can be tempted by the power it confers.

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

When the fact doesn't meet the theory then let go the theory.

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

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

I just woke up feeling happy this morning. You know those days when everything in the world seems right.

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

To every problem, there is a most simple solution.

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.

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

I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But-incongruous as it may seem to some-I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself.

That is why most great love stories are tragedies.

Money ... is always the great clue to what is happening in the world.

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings

Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.

Time is the best killer.

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

Coffee in England always tastes like a chemistry experiment.

Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.

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.

Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

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