Agatha Christie
Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived.Collection: Long
There's nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation.Collection: Conversation
In the midst of life, we are in death.Collection: Life
I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.Collection: Believe
Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.Collection: Mean
Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got brokenCollection: Heart
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Children
If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life.Collection: Christian
There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.Collection: Men
Ideas are like everything else. They've got to be marketed.Collection: Ideas
At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.Collection: Worst
There speaks the passion and the rebellion that go with red hair. My second wife had red hair. She was a beautiful woman, and she loved me. Strange, is it not? I have always admired red-haired women. Your hair is very beautiful. There are other things I like about you. Your spirit, your courage; the fact that you have a mind of your own. ~Mr. AristidesCollection: Beautiful
a great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness.Collection: Men
I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - HastingsCollection: Cheer
You travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing ... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.Collection: Dream
I didn't want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself.Collection: Simple
marriage is an extraordinary thing - and I doubt if any outsider - even a child of the marriage - has the right to judge.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Christian
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.Collection: World
It's no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius- some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas, but you must submit them to the discipline of form.Collection: Thinking
Writers are diffident creatures -- they need encouragement.Collection: Encouragement
I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life! That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Careers
Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.Collection: Mad
My remarks are, as always, apt, sound, and to the point. (Hercule Poirot)Collection: Sound
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.Collection: Ideas
Achievement brings with it its own anticlimax.Collection: Success
I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea.Collection: Ideas
You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.Collection: Reading
One does see so much evil in a village,' murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice.Collection: Voice
One does what one can, not what one cannot.Collection: Life
There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.Collection: Hands
"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!"Collection: Math
I'm going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He's going to marry and stick to me.Collection: Fashion
Beastly things, teeth. Give us trouble from the cradle to the grave.Collection: Giving
Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.Collection: Use
Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Said
At the 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.Collection: Sitting
Doctors can do almost anything nowadays, can't they, unless they kill you while they're trying to cure you.Collection: Death
I have a certain experience of the way people tell lies.Collection: Lying
I know nothing about pistols and revolvers, which is why I usually kill off my characters with a blunt instrument or better with poisons. Besides, poisons are neat and clean and really exciting... I do not think I could look a really ghastly mangled body in the face. It is the means that I am interested in. I do not usually describe the end, which is often a corpse.Collection: Character
Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence?Collection: Bars
I looked at her. Sheila was my girl--the girl I wanted--and wanted for keeps. But it wasn't any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival--the quick easy glib denial. It was a child's weapon--and she'd probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila, I must accept her as she was--be at hand to prop up the weak places. We've all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila's, but they were there.Collection: Girl
You're shocked, Mr. Burton, at hearing what our gossiping little town thinks. I can tell you this - they always think the worst!Collection: Thinking
Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham.Collection: Heartbreak
It had come about exactly in the way things happened in books.Collection: Book
Nurses - nurses, you'm all the same. Full of cheerfulness over other people's troubles.Collection: Nurse