Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

by Agatha Christie

Certainly, when you begin to write, you are usually in the throes of admiration for some writer, and, whether you will or no, you cannot help copying their style. Often it is not a style that suits you, and so you write badly. But as time goes on you are less influenced by admiration. You still admire certain writers, you may even wish you could write like them, but you know quite well that you can’t. Presumably, you have learnt literary humility. If I could write like Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark or Graham Greene, I should jump to high heaven with delight, but I know that I can’t, and it would never occur to me to attempt to copy them. I have learnt that I am me, that I can do the things that, as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do. As the Bible say, ‘Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?’