Agatha Christie: Trending quotes (page 11)

“The tear rose in Miss Marple's eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger - anger against a heartless killer. And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of triumph - the triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully reconstructed an extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of teeth.”

“"Eh bien, Mademoiselle, all through my life I have observed one thing — 'All one wants one gets!' Who knows?" His face screwed itself up comically. "You may get more than you bargain for."”

“Miss Marple twinkled at me.”

“The crime is now logical and reasonable.”

“Never mind. I knew — that was the great thing.”

“Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird - struggling to escape. You'll never escape now…”

“They are so busy knocking that they do not notice that the door is open!”

“See you, one should not ask for outside proof — no, reason should be enough. But the flesh is weak, it is consolation to find that one is on the right track.”

“Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live.”

“That was the worst of Dr Reilly. You never knew whether he was joking or not. He always said things in the same slow melancholy way — but half the time there was a twinkle underneath it.”

“One forgets how human murderers are.”

““Is he then an unhappy man?”
Poirot said:
“So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.”
The nun said softly:
“Ah, a rich man…””

“The old, you must remember, though considered incapable of action, have nevertheless a good fund of experience on which to draw.”

“I have the little idea, my friend, that this is a crime very carefully planned and staged. It is a far-sighted, long-headed crime. It is not — how shall I express it? — a Latin crime. It is a crime that shows traces of a cool, resourceful, deliberate brain — I think an Anglo-Saxon brain.”

“He is like a cat. And all cats are thieves.”

““You do well. Method and order, they are everything,” replied Poirot.”

“Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkable rapidity, and Mrs. Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particular intuition which turned out to be right!”

“In my end is my beginning — that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean? And just where does my story begin? I must try and think…”

“On the seat opposite him was an American tourist. The pattern of his clothes, of his overcoat, the grip he carried, down to his hopeful friendliness and his naïve absorption in the scenery, even the guidebook in his hand, all gave him away and proclaimed him a small town American seeing Europe for the first time. In another minute or so, Poirot judged, he would break into speech. His wistful dog-like expression could not be mistaken.”