Agatha Christie Quotes

377 Sourced Quotes

Speech... is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking.

Agatha Christie
I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.

Agatha Christie
Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.

Agatha Christie
Bad temper is its own safety valve. He who can bark does not bite.

Agatha Christie
It was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.

Agatha Christie
I have, perhaps, too professional a point of view where deaths are concerned. They are divided, in my mind, into two classes — deaths which are my affair and deaths which are not my affair — and though the latter class is infinitely more numerous — nevertheless whenever I come in contact with death I am like the dog who lifts his head and sniffs the scent.

Agatha Christie
Everything has got its right size. When it is its right size and well run it's the tops.

Agatha Christie
Ah, my friend, one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.

Agatha Christie
Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop. At least that's the way it is with me when I have to make a speech. Someone's got to catch hold of my coat-tails and pull me down by main force.

Agatha Christie
The reason he liked attending rich patients rather than poor ones was the he could exercise his active imagination in prescribing for their ailments.

Agatha Christie
Me, I am convinced it is the truth, said M. Bouc, becoming more and more enamoured of his theory.

Agatha Christie
The man obviously wanted to tell him something — and as obviously had lost the art of simple narration. Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say, the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.

Agatha Christie
The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.

Agatha Christie
It was abominable—wicked. The good God should not allow such things. We are not so wicked as that in Germany.

Agatha Christie
Well, what are you doing? What have you done?
I am sitting in this char, said Poirot. Thinking, he added.
Is that all? said Mrs. Oliver.
It is the important thing, said Poirot.

Agatha Christie
Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queu for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England.

Agatha Christie
And, of course, afterwards — one always hears these things afterwards, so much better if one heard them before — we found out that dozens of empty brandy bottles were taken out of the house every week!

Agatha Christie
Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition—and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do—clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth—the naked shining truth.

Agatha Christie
You agree — I'm sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.

Agatha Christie
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.

Agatha Christie
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 are writing, and aren't writing particularly well.

Agatha Christie
What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

Agatha Christie
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.

Agatha Christie
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. Aristides speaking

Agatha Christie
Mon ami, if you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs. That is all I have done.

Agatha Christie
Every man should have aunts. They illustrate the triumph of guesswork over logic.

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

Agatha Christie
Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence?

Agatha Christie
Exactly! It is absurd — improbable — it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! one cannot escape from the facts.

Agatha Christie
A dog, said Mr. Baldock, in his lecture-room style, which was capable of rousing almost anybody to violent irritation, has an extraordinary power of bolstering up the human ego.

Agatha Christie