Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBEwas an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott including Giant's Bread, but she is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the investigative work of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne, Ariadne Oliver, Harley Quin/Mr Satterthwaite and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 September 1890
CityTorquay, England
I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue.
Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.
Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. [Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]
I have always been so sure - too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child: "I do not know..."
Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?'
The lure of the past came up to grab me. To see a dagger slowly appearing, with its gold glint, through the sand was romantic. The carefulness of lifting pots and objects from the soil filled me with a longing to be an archaeologist myself.
Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture. Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.
The saddest thing in life and the hardest to live through, is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering.
There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.
When a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep.
Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?
If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't, luckily, have to bother about that.
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice.