Agatha Christie Quotes

377 Sourced Quotes

I never can stand seeing people pleased with themselves, said Joanna. It arouses all my worst instincts.

Agatha Christie
'It's never difficult to think of things,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'The trouble is that you think of too many, and then it all becomes too complicated, so you have to relinquish some of them and that is rather agony.'

Agatha Christie
I don't think I shall ever forget my first sight of Hercule Poirot. Of course, I got used to him later on, but to begin with it was a shock, and I think everyone else must have felt the same! I don't know what I'd imagined — something like Sherlock Holmes — [...] Of course, I knew he was a foreigner, but I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean. When you saw him you just wanted to laugh! He was like something on the stage or at the pictures. [...] He looked like a hairdresser in a comic play!

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

Agatha Christie
She was no longer young and had a mild worried face like a sheep.

Agatha Christie
Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.

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

Agatha Christie
There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.

Agatha Christie
It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation.

Agatha Christie
Yes, Mr. Lee. Superintendent Sugden did not wast time on explanations. What's all this?

Agatha Christie
We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here - and our last … They were good days, Yes, they have been good days...

Agatha Christie
Evil was, perhaps, necessarily always more impressive than good.

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

Agatha Christie
If anyone is really determined to lend you a book, you never can get out of it!

Agatha Christie
That's all very well—they're not educated, poor creatures.
No, and a good thing too. Education has devitalised the white races. Look at America—goes in for an orgy of culture. Simply disgusting.

Agatha Christie
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.

Agatha Christie
She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
What can one do?
You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.

Agatha Christie
Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's finger and say, 'It all began that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident?'

Agatha Christie
And Mr. Burnaby said acutely: "Well, it doesn't seem to have done her much good, poor lass." But after a while they stopped talking about her and discussed instead who was going to win the Grand National. For, as Mr. Ferguson was saying at that minute in Luxor, it is not the past that matters but the future.

Agatha Christie
You have an excellent heart, my friend—but your grey cells are in a deplorable condition.

Agatha Christie
"I saw a particular personage and I threatened him — yes, Mademoiselle, I, Hercule Poirot, threatened him."
"With the police?"
"No," said Poirot drily, "With the Press — a much more deadly weapon."

Agatha Christie
Is he then an unhappy man?
Poirot said:
So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.
The nun said softly:
Ah, a rich man…

Agatha Christie
That was the worst of Dr Reilly. You never knew whether he was joking or not. He always said things in the same slow melancholy way — but half the time there was a twinkle underneath it.

Agatha Christie
But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.

Agatha Christie
What beats me—it always does—is how a man can be so clever and yet be such a perfect fool.

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

Agatha Christie
Was that 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.

Agatha Christie
Where do one's fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open?

Agatha Christie
The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood.

Agatha Christie
I was wrong about that young man of yours. 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. Now, whenever that young man looked at you he looked like a sheep. I take back all I said this morning. It is genuine.

Agatha Christie