Agatha Christie Quotes

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.

If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it - often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett.

The body—the cage—is everything of the most respectable—but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled.

The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.

I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.

I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

Some of us, in the words of the divine Greta Garbo, want to be alone.

How fast you go. You arrive at a conclusion much sooner than I would permit myself to do.

All these here are linked together - by death.

I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one’s friends and one’s family and one’s caste.

The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

Because, you see, if the man were an invention—a fabrication—how much easier to make him disappear!

The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world.

It was a woman. Only a woman would stab like that.

Women are like that. When they are enraged they have great strength.

A ridiculous-looking little man. The sort of little man one could never take seriously.

Coffee, then, Madame. You need some stimulant.

Hercule Poirot addressed himself to the task of keeping his moustaches out of the soup.

Say what you like, trial by jury is a sound system.

I suppose I saw photos of him in the papers, but I wouldn’t recognize my own mother when a press photographer had done with her.

The other two waited respectfully while M. Bouc struggled in mental agony.

The little man removed his hat. What an egg-shaped head he had.

If you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs.

“I remember a text that hung in my nursery as a child. ‘Be sure thy sin will find thee out.’ It’s very true, that.”

“Of course, you’re very young… you haven’t got to that yet. But it does come! The blessed relief when you know that you’ve done with it all—that you haven’t got to carry the burden any longer. You’ll feel that too, someday….”

“My dear lady, in my experience of ill-doing, Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals—and the process is often fraught with difficulties. There are no short cuts.”

“From now on, it is our task to suspect each and every one amongst us.”

“There were, I considered, amongst my guests, varying degrees of guilt. Those whose guilt was the lightest should, I considered, pass out first, and not suffer the prolonged mental strain and fear that the more cold-blooded offenders were to suffer.”

“There was a silence—a comfortable replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating . . . ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Silence, please! . . . You are charged with the following indictments.‘”

“I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But—incongruous as it may seem to some—I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.”

“The storm increased. The wind howled against the side of the house. Everyone was in the living room. They sat listlessly huddled together. And, surreptitiously, they watched each other. When Rogers brought in the tea tray, they all jumped.”

“‘You can go to the rock, Cyril….’ That was what murder was—as easy as that! But afterwards you went on remembering….”

“To see a wretched criminal squirming in the dock, suffering the tortures of the damned… was to me an exquisite pleasure. Mind you, I took no pleasure in seeing an innocent man there.”

“He thought: Peaceful sound. Peaceful place…. 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.”

“Breakfast was a curious meal. Everyone was very polite…. Six people, all outwardly self-possessed and normal. And within? Thoughts that ran round in a circle like squirrels in a cage…. “What next? What next? Who? Which?”

“Mr. Owen could only come to the island in one way. It is perfectly clear. Mr. Owen is one of us.”

“Five people—five frightened people. Five people who watched each other, who now hardly troubled to hide the state of their nervous tension. There was little pretense now….They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation.”

“My point is that there can be no exceptions allowed on the score of character, position, or probability. What we must now examine is the possibility of eliminating one or more persons on the facts.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that we have been invited here by a madman – probably a dangerous homicidal lunatic.”

“But don’t you see, he’s mad? It’s all mad! The whole thing of going by the rhyme is mad! Dressing up the judge, killing Rogers when he was chopping sticks—drugging Mrs. Rogers so that she overslept herself—arranging for a bumble bee when Miss Brent died!”

“Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defence?”

“None of us are going to leave this island. That’s the plan. You know it, of course, perfectly. What, perhaps, you can’t understand is the relief!”

“And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Soldier Island.”

“I know how I, Hercule Poirot, would act in anything, but I do not know how you would act, well though I know you.”

“At any moment the danger might arise, as someone whom you did not remember but who remembered you, or someone whom you definitely did not want to talk to but whom you found you could not avoid.”

“Oh yes- it is terrible to hear you sitting there and say things as though you apologize for what you are.

“But what does it matter which? If one of your parents killed the other, would it really matter to the mother of the boy you were going to marry, which way round it was?”

″‘Your instinct was quite correct. It’s happened.’ Poirot straightened up and asked sharply: ‘What has happened?’ ‘Linnet Doyle’s dead...‘”

“If a girl’s as rich as that she’s no right to be a good-looker as well. And she is a good-looker... Got everything, that girl has. Doesn’t seem fair...”

“My dear Monsieur Poirot—how can I put it? It’s like the moon when the sun comes out. You don’t know it’s there anymore. When once I’d met Linnet—Jackie didn’t exist.”

“Why, I haven’t got an enemy in the world.”

“Poirot was silent. But it was not a modest silence. His eyes seemed to be saying: ‘You are wrong. They didn’t allow for Hercule Poirot.‘”

“Well, here’s to crime,”

“I shall die if I can’t marry him! I shall die! I shall die! I shall die…”

″‘So, if I lost all my money, you’d drop me tomorrow?’ ‘Yes, darling, I would. You can’t say I’m not honest about it! I only like successful people.‘”

“I will do what I can in the interests of humanity.”

“I can’t believe that I—did that! I know now what you meant by opening your heart to evil...”