Agatha Christie

Writer

1890-09-15 – 1976-01-12

Agatha Christie was an English writer known for detective fiction and stage plays. She created the fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her works are among the most widely translated and bestselling in literary history.

Quotes by Agatha Christie

To marry and have children, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred--more, in a thousand, can make for herself a name and position as you have done.
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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.
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I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.
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Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That's all prehistoric.
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What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed.
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Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived.
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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.
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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.
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More children suffer from interference than from noninterference.
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Child's evidence is always the best evidence there is. I'd rely on it every time. No good in court, of course. Children can't stand being asked direct questions. They mumble or else look idiotic and say they don't know. They're at their best when they're showing off.
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They're like children, really. Only children are far more logical which makes it difficult sometimes with them. But these people are illogical, they want to be reassured by your telling them what they want to believe. Then they're quite happy again for a bit.
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The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
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Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary.
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Such nice people, the Hillingdons, though she's not really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she's always very pleasant and all that, but one never seems to get to know her better.'Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully. 'One never knows what she is thinking.''Perhaps that is just as well.''I beg your pardon?''Oh nothing really, only that I've always had the feeling that perhaps her thoughts might be rather disconcerting.
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This was genius at close quarters, and genius had that something above normal in it that was a great strain upon the ordinary mind and feeling. All five were different from each other, yet each had that curious quality of burning intensity, the single-mindedness of purpose that made such a terrifying impression. She did not know whether it were a quality of brain or rather a quality of outlook, of intensity. But each of them, she thought, was in his or her way a passionate idealist.
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Everything is possible, isn't it? The world soon teaches one that!
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... suppose if something very terrible had happened, so terrible as to be almost unbearable, one might get like that. One might run away from reality into a half world of one's own and then, of course, after a time, one wouldn't be able to get back...
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If you care for money too much, it is only the money you see, everything else is in shadow.
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Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it's mercenary of me, but there it is
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My flute, M. Poirot, is my oldest companion. When everything else fails, music remains.
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