Agatha Christie Quotes (320 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Agatha Christie

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Agatha Christie

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

Agatha Christie

The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Agatha Christie

The Hound of Death

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie: 320 quotes 65 likes

Famous Agatha Christie Quotes

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Agatha Christie

“Very few of us are what we seem.”

Agatha Christie

Source: The Man in the Mist

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, 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

Foreword
An Autobiography (1977)

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”

Agatha Christie

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

Agatha Christie

“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 book The Man in the Brown Suit

Source: The Man in the Brown Suit

Agatha Christie Quotes about people

“It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.”

Agatha Christie book Sleeping Murder

Sleeping Murder (1976)

“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

Source: An Autobiography

“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

Source: Murder at the Vicarage

“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

Source: Elephants Can Remember

“Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.”

Agatha Christie

Source: And Then There Were None: A Mystery Play in Three Acts

“Two people rarely see the same thing.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the links

Source: The Murder on the Links

Agatha Christie: Trending quotes

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

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

Source: The Labours of Hercules

“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 book Murder in Mesopotamia

Source: Murder in Mesopotamia

Women , Swine

“Children and one’s social inferiors never know when to say good-bye. One has to say it for them.”

Agatha Christie book The Burden

The Burden (1956)

Children

Agatha Christie Quotes

“Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken”

Agatha Christie

Heartbreaking , Heart

“Time is the best killer.”

Agatha Christie

Time

“Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.”

Agatha Christie book Cat Among the Pigeons

Source: Cat Among the Pigeons

“The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Hercule Poirot
Source: Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Appearance

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

Agatha Christie

Books , Time

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

Agatha Christie

Source: An Autobiography

Love

“In the midst of life, we are in death.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

Depressing , Life , Death

“Words, madmoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”

Agatha Christie book The A.B.C. Murders

Source: The A.B.C. Murders

Idea , Clothes

“If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, they usually admit it — often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Source: Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Truth

“I don't know. I don't know at all. And that's what's frightening the life out of me. To have no idea….”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

Life , Idea

“I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.”

Agatha Christie Murder at the Vicarage

Source: Murder at the Vicarage

World

“One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

“One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone.”

Agatha Christie book A Murder Is Announced

Source: A Murder Is Announced

“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide.”

Agatha Christie book A Caribbean Mystery

Source: A Caribbean Mystery

“Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Source: Death in the Clouds

“The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

World , Happiness

“I’m used to that. It often seems to me that’s all detective work is — wiping out your false starts and beginning again.”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile (1937)

Falseness

“"Nothing", I said sadly. "They are two delightful women!" "And neither of them is for you?" finished Poirot. "Never mind. Console yourself, my friend. We may hunt together again, who knows?"”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Women

“It was abominable — wicked. The good God should not allow such things. We are not so wicked as that in Germany.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

God

“It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules (1967)

Women , Men

“One has occasionally to pocket one’s pride and readjust one’s ideas.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

Idea

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”

Agatha Christie book Peril at End House

Source: Peril at End House

Exercises , Thinking

“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 book The Hound of Death

Source: The Hound of Death

Mother's Day , For Mother , Love , World

“An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”

Agatha Christie

Christie denied having made this remark, which had been attributed to her by her second husband Sir Max Mallowan in a news report (9 March 1954); according to Nigel Dennis, "Genteel Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie Puts Her Zest for Life Into Murder", Life, Volume 40, N° 20, 14 May 1956 http://books.google.com/books?id=p0wEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA102, she was quoting "a witty wife"; Quote Investigator reports on "An Archaeologist Is the Best Husband a Woman Can Have" as of uncertain origin. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/12/husband/
Disputed
Variant: An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

“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

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.”

Agatha Christie

Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Context: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.

Law

“I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands… But on the other hand, I am the law!”

Agatha Christie

Law

“Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop.”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Dr Reilly
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Context: Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop. At least that's the way it is with me when I have to make a speech. Someone's got to catch hold of my coat-tails and pull me down by main force.

“I have given them life instead of death, freedom instead of the cords of superstition, beauty and truth instead of corruption and exploitation.”

Agatha Christie

Akhenaten, as portrayed in Akhnaton (1937); Christie later revised the play slightly in 1972, and it was published in 1973.
Context: I have given them life instead of death, freedom instead of the cords of superstition, beauty and truth instead of corruption and exploitation. The old bad days are over for them, the Light of the Aton has risen, and they can dwell in peace and harmony freed from the shadow of fear and oppression.

Life , Death , Truth , Beauty

“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them.”

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules (1967)
Context: Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.

“You give too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Imagination

“Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”

Agatha Christie The Secret Adversary

Source: The Secret Adversary

Personality

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

Agatha Christie

Life

“Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham.”

Agatha Christie book The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

Source: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

Love , Hate

“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 book The Clocks

Source: The Clocks

Books , Way , Strong

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

Agatha Christie

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

Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Hercule Poirot
Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Context: Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

Truth , Beauty

“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 book Hallowe'en Party

Source: Hallowe'en Party

Error

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”

Agatha Christie

Part III: Growing Up, §II
Source: An Autobiography (1977)

Thinking

“To every problem, there is a most simple solution.”

Agatha Christie book The Clocks

Source: The Clocks

Problem

“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory — let the theory go.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

“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 book The Mystery of the Blue Train

Miss Viner
Source: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
Context: I was wrong about that young man of yours. 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. Now, whenever that young man looked at you he looked like a sheep. I take back all I said this morning. It is genuine.

Love , Help

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

Agatha Christie book The Mystery of the Blue Train

Hercule Poirot
Source: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Men

“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Hercule Poirot
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)