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Agatha Christie Quotes
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Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of his profession in her fiction.

According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the highest-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End of London on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was closed down in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In September 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than thirty feature films are based on her work. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. September 1890 – 12. January 1976
Agatha Christie photo
Agatha Christie: 320 quotes67 likes

Agatha Christie Quotes

“You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.”

Agatha Christie book Peril at End House

Source: Peril at End House

“Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.”

Agatha Christie

“People who can be very good can be very bad too.”

Agatha Christie book They Do It with Mirrors

Source: They Do It with Mirrors

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

“What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Source: Murder on the Orient Express

“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”

Agatha Christie book The Body in the Library

Source: The Body in the Library

“Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts.

-"The Blood-Stained Pavement”

Agatha Christie book The Thirteen Problems

Source: The Thirteen Problems

“Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.”

Agatha Christie book Death Comes as the End

(1945)
Source: Death Comes as the End

“Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?”

Agatha Christie book Lord Edgware Dies

Source: Lord Edgware Dies

“He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperment. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.”

Agatha Christie

“Never do I deceive you, Hastings. I only permit you to deceive yourself.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases (1974)
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…”

Agatha Christie book After the Funeral

Source: After the Funeral (1953)
Context: There were to be no short cuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away...

“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Source: Death on the Nile

“And so could you know it if you would only use the brains the good God has given you. Sometimes I really am tempted to believe that by inadvertence, He passed you by.”

Agatha Christie book Lord Edgware Dies

Source: Lord Edgware Dies

“I like to see an angry Englishman,” said Poirot. “They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Source: Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

“The heart of a woman who loves will forgive many blows.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the links

Source: The Murder on the Links

“I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.”

Agatha Christie

“The past is the father of the present.”

Agatha Christie book Hallowe'en Party

Source: Hallowe'en Party

“The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.”

Agatha Christie book Endless Night

Source: Endless Night

“One must make one's own mistakes”

Agatha Christie book Cat Among the Pigeons

Source: Cat Among the Pigeons

“I am all that there is of the most real.”

Agatha Christie

“I'm not often bored,' I assured her. "Life's not long enough for that.”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Source: Murder in Mesopotamia

“Oh, I'm not afraid of death! What have I got to live for after all? I suppose you believe it's very wrong to kill a person who has injured you-even if they've taken away everything you had in the world?”

Agatha Christie book Death on the Nile

Source: Death on the Nile

“Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Source: Death in the Clouds

“I was thinking, that when my time comes, I should be sorry if the only plea I had to offer was that of justice. Because it might mean that only justice would be meted out to me.”

Agatha Christie Murder at the Vicarage

Source: Murder at the Vicarage

“A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man. (Inspector Miller)”

Agatha Christie book The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Source: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

“I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people if they are sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest stumbling block in our world today.

~Jessop”

Agatha Christie book Destination Unknown

Source: Destination Unknown

“The world is full of good people who do bad things!”

Agatha Christie

“See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the Orient Express

Source: Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

“Fear, what a strange thing fear was…”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

“Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.”

Agatha Christie book Peril at End House

Source: Peril at End House

“I congratulate you on having such a unique and beautiful problem.”

Agatha Christie

Hickory Dickory Dock

“If you've lost, you've lost.”

Agatha Christie book Five Little Pigs

Five Little Pigs

“Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?”

Agatha Christie

First line
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)

“It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.”

Agatha Christie

This is in fact something an admirer said, which Christie quoted with disapproval in LIFE magazine (14 May 1956), p. 98
Misattributed

“If one approaches a problem with order and method there should be no difficulty in solving it — none whatever,’ said Pirot severely.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

“Work, Mr. Burton. There’s nothing like work, for men and women. The one unforgivable sin is idleness.”

Agatha Christie book The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger (1942)

“We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here — and our last … They were good days, Yes, they have been good days…”

Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)

“Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queu for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England.”

Agatha Christie book Sleeping Murder

Sleeping Murder (1976)

“I have a certain experience of the way people tell lies.”

Agatha Christie book A Caribbean Mystery

Miss Marple
A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

“The English are very stupid,” said Poirot. “They think that they can deceive anyone but that no one can deceive them.”

Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases (1974)

“A dog,” said Mr. Baldock, in his lecture-room style, which was capable of rousing almost anybody to violent irritation, “has an extraordinary power of bolstering up the human ego.”

Agatha Christie book The Burden

The Burden (1956)

“It all came together then, you see — all the various isolated bits — and made a coherent pattern.”

Agatha Christie

A Murder is Announced (1950)