Agatha Christie > Quotes

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. ”
― Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

“A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
― Agatha Christie

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”
― Agatha Christie

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”
― Agatha Christie

“If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.”
― Agatha Christie

“One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.”
― Agatha Christie

“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ”
― Agatha Christie

“The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

“Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists. ”
― Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia

“It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.”
― Agatha Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit

“The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”
― Agatha Christie

“I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”
― Agatha Christie, Hallowe'en Party

“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.”
― Agatha Christie

“It is 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

“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.”
― Agatha Christie

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.”
― Agatha Christie

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
― Agatha Christie

“If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.”
― Agatha Christie

“Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”
― Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary

“One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.”
― Agatha Christie

“The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage

“Time is the best killer.”
― Agatha Christie

“Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture.
Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.”
― Agatha Christie

“I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.”
― Agatha Christie

“Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.”
― Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.”
― Agatha Christie

“To every problem, there is a most simple solution.”
― Agatha Christie, The Clocks

“The amount of missing girls I've had to trace and their family and their friends always say the same thing. 'She was a bright and affectionate disposition and had no men friends'. That's never true. It's unnatural. Girls ought to have men friends. If not, then there's something wrong about them....”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

“No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
--Poirot”
― Agatha Christie

“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.”
― Agatha Christie, Le Train Bleu

“Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none.”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

“At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage

“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Everyone is a potential murderer-in everyone there arises from time to time the wish to kill-though not the will to kill.”
― Agatha Christie

“Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Words, madmoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”
― Agatha Christie, The ABC Murders

“Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.”
― Agatha Christie, Partners In Crime

“There was a moment when 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're writing, and aren't writing particularly well”
― Agatha Christie

“She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.”
― Agatha Christie, Elephants Can Remember

“An appreciative listener is always stimulating.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.”
― Agatha Christie

“To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.”
― Agatha Christie

“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”
― Agatha Christie

“I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue. ”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“In the midst of life, we are in death.”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None