Agatha Christie

They say all the world loves a lover — apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth.

How can I go on living here and suspecting everybody ?

If only-if only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your moustache. If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache-a thing of beauty such as mine.

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.

This is no time for refusing to look facts in the face.

<i>Mon ami</i>, let this be a lesson to you. You are a <i>man</i>. Behave, then, like a <i>man</i>! It is against Nature for a man to grovel. Women and Nature have almost exactly the same reactions! Remember it is better to take the largest plate within reach and fling it at a woman's head than it is to wriggle like a worm whenever she looks at you!

Very unfortunately, she had no husband. She had never had a husband, and therefore did not kill a husband.

If the fact will not fit the theory - let the theory go

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

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.

A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream. And death comes as the end.

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.

To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man — given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.

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