Crooked House Quotes

“Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“I think people more often kill those they love, than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“الناس في الغالب يقتلون من يحبون أكثر من قتلهم من يكرهون ، لأن الذين تحبهم هم وحدهم الذين يستطيعون أن يجعلوا حياتك لا تطاق”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“I've never met a murderer who wasn't vain... It's their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten. They may be frightened of being caught, but they can't help strutting and boasting and usually they're sure they've been far too clever to be caught.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Murder, you see, is an amateur crime... One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps, had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman - and they've killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them... They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it. I don't think, in my experience, that any murderer has really felt remorse... Murderers are set apart, they are 'different' - murder is wrong - but not for them - for them it is necessary - the victim has 'asked for it,' it was 'the only way.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“What are murderers like? Some of them, have been thoroughly nice chaps.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Because this is just what a nightmare is. Walking about among people you know, looking in their faces- and suddenly the faces change- and it's not someone you know any longer- it's a stranger- a cruel stranger.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“But some people, I suspect, remain morally immature. They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it. I don’t think, in my experience, that any murderer has really felt remorse … And that, perhaps, is the mark of Cain. Murderers are set apart, they are ‘different’—murder is wrong—but not for them—for them it is necessary—the victim has ‘asked for it,’ it was ‘the only way.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It was rather like the exit of a bumblebee and left a noticeable silence behind it.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“More children suffer from interference than from noninterference.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“إن لقاء شخص مرة أخرى بعد إنقطاع طويل مربكٌ إلى حد ما وإن يكن حاضر في ذهنك طوال تلك الفترة”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It was a big room, full of books. The books did not confine themselves to the bookcases that reached up to the ceiling. They were on chairs and tables and even on the floor. And yet there was no sense of disarray about them.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“I think people more often kill those they love than those they hate . Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you. - Old Man Charles”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“The things that are worthwhile are usually accomplished by someone with enthusiasm and drive...”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It was artificial conversation, but it tided us over the first awkwardness.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“This book is one of my own special favorites. I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself: "One day, when I've plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself- I'll begin it" I should say that of one's output, five books are work to one that is real pleasure. Crooked House was pure pleasure. I often wonder whether people who read a book can know if it has been hard work of a pleasure to write?
Again and again someone says to me: "How you must have enjoyed writing so and so!" This about a book that obstinately refused to come out the way you wished, whose characters are sticky, the plot needlessly involved, and the dialogue stilted - or so you think yourself. But perhaps the author isn't the best judge of his or her own work. However, practically everybody has liked Crooked House, so I am justified in my own belief that it is one of my best.
I don't know what put the Leonides family in my head - they just came. Then, like Topsy "they growed."
I feel that I myself was only their scribe.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period. When at last Sophia came through the swing doors our meeting seemed completely unreal. She was wearing black, and that, in some curious way, startled me! Most other women were wearing black, but I got it into my head that it was definitely mourning—and it surprised me that Sophia should be the kind of person who did wear black—even for a near relative.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Is there a common denominator? I wonder. You know, if there is, I should be inclined to say it is vanity.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“... people are capable of surprising one frightfully. One gets an idea of them into one's head, and sometimes it's absolutely wrong. Not always - but sometimes.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“It's very important, Charles, that I should make you understand this. You see, we're a very queer family... There's a lot of ruthlessness in us—and—different kinds of ruthlessness. That's what's so disturbing. The different kinds.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Come on, Charles, let's have it."
"You mayn't like it," I said. "I met Sophia Leonides out in Cairo. I fell in love with her. I'm going to marry her. I met her tonight. She dined with me."
"Dined with you? In London? I wonder just how she managed to do that? The family were asked - oh, quite politely, to stay put."
"Quite so. She shinned down a pipe from the bathroom window."
The Old Man's lips twitched for a moment into a smile. "She seems," he said, "to be a young lady of some resource.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Creo que la gente mata con mayor frecuencia a los que quiere que a los que odia. Posiblemente porque sólo aquéllos a quienes uno quiere de verdad pueden desbaratar nuestra vida.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Murder, you see, is an amateur crime. I'm speaking of course of the kind of murder you have in mind - not gangster stuff. One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They've been in a tight place, or they've wanted something very badly, money or a woman - and they've killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn't operate with them.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Poor child...”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“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.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“You have to listen at doors if you want to find out things.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“His face was quite incurious.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“Perhaps, too, the various factors of heredity—what Sophia had called the "ruthlessness of the family"—had met together.
She had had an authoritarian ruthlessness of her grandmother's family, and the ruthless egoism of Magda, seeing only her point of view. She had also presumably suffered, sensitive like Philip, from the stigma of being the unattractive—the changeling child—of the family. Finally, in her very marrow had run the essential crooked strain of old Leonides. She had been Leonides' grandchild, she had resembled him in brain and cunning—but where his love had gone outwards to family and friends, hers had turned inward to herself.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“We turned the pages. It was an amazing production. Interesting, I should imagine, to a psychologist. It set out, with such terrible clarity, the fury of thwarted egoism.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House