Agatha Christie Quotes (65 Quotes)

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.

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

I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one's friends and one's family and one's caste.

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.

A slightly uncommon condition of the some-long-word. Nothing at all serious, but it just needs putting right. A simple treatment.

The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

Be sure, they sin will find thee out

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things...

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

In the midst of life, we are in death.

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

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

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

You're very young...you haven't got to that yet. But it does come! The blessed relief when you know that you've done with it all - that you haven't got to carry the burden any longer. You'll feel that too someday...

Fey...a Scotch word...It means the kind of exalted happiness that comes before disaster. You know--it's too good to be 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?

Your not reliable. You wouldn't be at all a comfortable sort of person to live with.

At a 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. She sat very upright. Round her neck was a collar of very large pearls which, improbable though it seemed, were real. Her hands were covered with rings. Her sable coat was pushed back on her shoulders. A very small and expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it.

I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.

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

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

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

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation A human being, Hastings, cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away.

But it is always interesting when one doesn't see,' she added. 'If you don't see what a thing means, you must be looking at it wrong way around.

'I think you're begging the question,' said Haydock, 'and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that'

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

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

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.

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.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

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

These little grey cells. It is up to them.

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.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

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.

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

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