Agatha Christie An Autobiography Quotes

If the thing you want beyond anything cannot be, it is much better to recognize it and go forward, instead of dwelling on one's regrets and hopes. ~ Agatha Christie

Ah, I see you are an actress, Miss Marple, as well as an avenger. ~ Agatha Christie

The spoken word and the written - there is an astonishing gulf between them. There is a way of turning sentences that completely reverses the meaning. ~ Agatha Christie

And yet," said Poirot, "suppose an accident-"
"Ah, no, my friend-"
"From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together - by death. ~ Agatha Christie

Please don't be too prejudiced against the poor thing because she's a liar. I do really believe that, like so many liars, there is a real substratum of truth behind her lies. I mean that though, to take an instance, her atrocity stories have grown and grown until every kind of unpleasant story that has ever appeared in print has happened to her or her relations personally, she did have a bad shock initially and did see one, at least, of her relations killed. I think a lot of these displaced persons feel, perhaps justly, that their claim to our notice and sympathy lies in their atrocity value and so they exaggerate and invent. ~ Agatha Christie

You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don't see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all. ~ Agatha Christie

I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language. ~ Agatha Christie

A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life. ~ Agatha Christie

But I don't doubt it will be essentially the same type of crime. The details may be different, but the essentials underlying them will be the same. It's odd, but a criminal gives himself away every time by that. Man is an unoriginal animal," said Hercule Poirot.
"Women," said Mrs. Oliver, " are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running."
"Don't you ever write the same plot twice running?" asked Battle. ~ Agatha Christie

Man is an unoriginal animal. Unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life, equally unoriginal outside the law. If a man commits a crime, any other crime he commits will resemble it closely. ~ Agatha Christie

An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. ~ Agatha Christie

I don't think I like her very much. She is very good looking, but I sometimes think she is like one of those beautiful pears one gets-they have a rosy flush and a rather waxen appearance-" He shook his head.
"And they're bad inside?" said Lydia. "How funny you should say that, Alfred!"
"Why funny?"
She answered:
"Because-usually-you are such a gentle soul. You hardly ever say an unkind thing about anyone. I get annoyed with you sometimes because yo're not sufficiently, oh, what shall I say?-sufficiently suspicious-not worldly enough! ~ Agatha Christie

We are all 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, whereas at twenty we put on a show of being someone else, of being in the mode of the moment. If there is an intellectual fashion, you become an intellectual; if girls are fluffy and frivolous, you are fluffy and frivolous. As life goes on, however, it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned. I ~ Agatha Christie

I enrage myself with an imbecile. I say, 'I would like to kick him.' Instead I kick the table. I say, 'This table, it is the imbecile, I kick him so. ~ Agatha Christie

Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier) ~ Agatha Christie

Don't pretend to come out of the ark, Len. You know very well that an attractive young woman with an elderly husband is a kind of gift from heaven to a young man. ~ Agatha Christie

In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats. ~ Agatha Christie

Decidedly it was the policy of an imbecile. ~ Agatha Christie

They all fuss about me so," she said. "They rub it in that I'm an old woman."
"And you don't feel like one."
"No, I don't, Jane. In spite of all my aches and pains–and I've got plenty. Inside I go on feeling just like a chit like Gina. Perhaps everyone does. The glass shows them how old they are and they just don't believe it. ~ Agatha Christie

But what stupendous good fortune! What an answer to prayer. A guest house, and a charming hostess. My Rolls Royce, alas, has run into a snowdrift. blinding snow everywhere. I do not know where I am. Perhaps, I think to myself, I shall freeze to death. And then I take a little bag, I stagger through the snow, I see before me big iron gates. A habitation! I am saved. Twice I fall into the snow as I come up your drive, but at last I arrive and immediately - despair turns to joy. You can let me have a room - yes? ~ Agatha Christie

He thought: Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther ... you've come to the end of things ... . He knew, suddenly, that he didn't want to leave the island. VI ~ Agatha Christie

A man in love is an awful sight. ~ Agatha Christie

You may say that I had gone to ask Megan to marry me in an absurdly complacent frame of mind and that I deserved what I got - but it was not really like that. It was because I felt so assured, so certain, that Megan belonged to me - that she was my business, that to look after her and make her happy and keep her from harm was the only natural right way of life for me, that I had expected her to feel, too - that she and I belonged to each other.
But I was not giving up. Oh, no! Megan was my woman and I was going to have her. ~ Agatha Christie

A man who has shot lions in large quantities has an unfair advantage over other men. ~ Agatha Christie

Wardress in a prison,was she, that old hippopotamus? That is significant, perhaps."
Sarah said:
"You mean that that is the cause of her tyranny? It is the habit of her former profession."
Gerard shook his head.
"No, that is approaching it from the wrong angle. There is some deep underlying compulsion. She does not love tyranny because she has been a wardress. Let us rather say that she became a wardress because she loved tyranny. In my theory it was a secret desire for power over other human beings that led her to adopt that profession."
His face was very grave.
"There are such strange things buried down in the unconscious. A lust for power - a lust for cruelty - a savage desire to tear and rend - all the inheritance of our past racial memories...They are all there, Miss King, all the cruelty and savagery and lust...We shut the door on them and deny them conscious life, but sometimes - they are too strong."
Sarah shivered. "I know."
Gerard continued: "We see it all around us today - in political creeds, in the conduct of nations. A reaction from humanitarianism - from pity - from brotherly good-will. The creeds sound well sometimes - a wise régime - a beneficent government - but imposed by force - resting on a basis of cruelty and fear. They are opening the door, these apostles of violence, they are letting up the old savagery, the old delight in cruelty for its own sake! Oh, it is difficult - Man is an animal very delicately balanced. ~ Agatha Christie

It is, then, your opinion that Christmas time is an unlikely season for crime ? ~ Agatha Christie

I don't particularly want to think of your funeral because I'd much prefer to die before you do. But I mean, if I were going to your funeral, at any rate it would be an orgy of grief. I should take a lot of handkerchiefs. ~ Agatha Christie

I shall never forget my first sight of Mary Cavendish. Her tall, slender form, outlined against the bright light; the vivid sense of slumbering fire that seemed to find expression only in those wonderful tawny eyes of hers, remarkable eyes, different from any other woman's that I have ever known; the intense power of stillness she possessed, which nevertheless conveyed the impression of a wild untamed spirit in an exquisitely civilised body - all these things are burnt into my memory. I shall never forget them. ~ Agatha Christie

My friend, in working upon a case, one does not take into account only the things that are "mentioned". There is no reason to mention many things which may be important. Equally, there is often an excellent reason for not mentioning them. ~ Agatha Christie

An appreciative listener is always stimulating. ~ Agatha Christie

And then?"
"And then," said Poirot. "We will talk! Je vous assure, Hastings - there is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide. A human being, Hastings, cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away."
"What do you expect Cust to tell you?"
Hercule Poirot smiled.
"A lie," he said. "And by it, I shall know the truth! ~ Agatha Christie

That's right," said Mrs. Oliver in an exasperated voice, "blame it all on me as usual! ~ Agatha Christie

The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One does not 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 got everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they have not got the energy to fight. ~ Agatha Christie

I remember one teacher there -- I can't recall her name now. She was short and spare, and I remember her eager jutting chin. Quite unexpectedly one day (in the middle, I think, of an arithmetic lesson) she suddenly launched forth on a speech on life and religion. "All of you," she said, "every one of you -- will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Canaan, know the peace and happiness that it means to be in harmony with God and with God's will. But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life." She then returned to the problems of compound interest ... ~ Agatha Christie

The oth­ers went up­stairs, a slow unwilling pro­ces­sion. If this had been an old house, with creak­ing wood, and dark shad­ows, and heav­ily pan­elled walls, there might have been an eerie feel­ing. But this house was the essence of moder­ni­ty. There were no dark corners - ​no pos­si­ble slid­ing pan­els - it was flood­ed with elec­tric light - every­thing was new and bright and shining. There was noth­ing hid­den in this house, noth­ing con­cealed. It had no at­mo­sphere about it. Some­how, that was the most fright­en­ing thing of all. They ex­changed good-​nights on the up­per land­ing. Each of them went in­to his or her own room, and each of them automatical­ly, al­most with­out con­scious thought, locked the door.... ~ Agatha Christie