Agatha Christie Quotes - Page 11

An ugly voice repels me where an ugly face would not.

You should employ your little grey cells.

There are many things that are unbelievable. Especially before breakfast, is it not? That is what one of your classics says. Six impossible things before breakfast.

Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush!

I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there.

Talk and tea is his specialty," said Giles. "He has about five cups of tea a day. But he works splendidly when we are looking.

I really cannot understand the point of what you're saying. Really,' said Clotilde, looking at her. 'What a very extraordinary person you are. What sort of a woman are you? Why are you talking like this? Who are you?' Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind that she had once worn in the West Indies. 'One of my names,' she said, 'is Nemesis.' 'Nemesis? And what does that mean?' 'I think you know,' said Miss Marple. 'You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.

No sign, so far, of anything sinister—but I live in hope.

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 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.

Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

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.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

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.

Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.

One place is very like another.

I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has.

how tedious is retirement! You cannot imagine to yourself the monotony with which day comes after day.

We are the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined---sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured---so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.

Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?

You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?" It will not." If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me." I, also M. Ratchett." What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said.

One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again.