Agatha Christie citations

Page 7

“Les affaires - les affaires"-M. Bauc”

“How convenient if you could ring up Harrods and say ‘Please send along two good murderers, will you?”

“I aroused Judith’s contempt by asking what good all this was likely to do to mankind? There is no question that annoys your true scientist more.”

“Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition--and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do--clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth--the naked shining truth.”

“Pilar — remember — nothing is so boring as devotion.”

“But how much are the delicate convolutions of the brain influenced by the digestive apparatus? When the mal de mere seizes me I, Hercule Poirot, am a creature with no grey cells, no order, no method — a mere member of the human race somewhere below average intelligence!”

“Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!”

“Is it coding — or code breaking? Is it like Deborah’s job? Do be careful, Tommy, people go queer doing that and can’t sleep and walk about all night groaning and repeating 978345286 or something like that and finally have nervous breakdowns and go into homes.”

“I have, perhaps, too professional a point of view where deaths are concerned. They are divided, in my mind, into two classes — deaths which are my affair and deaths which are not my affair — and though the latter class is infinitely more numerous — nevertheless whenever I come in contact with death I am like the dog who lifts his head and sniffs the scent.”

““Jerry had an expensive public school education, so he doesn’t recognize Latin when he hears it,” said Joanna”

“When you were a child, I loved you. I loved your grave face and the confidence with which you came to me, asking me to mend your broken toys. And then, after eight years' absence, you came again and sat here, and brought me the thoughts that were in your mind. And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas - seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision…”

“Take this Hercules — this hero! Hero, indeed! What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!”

“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…"”

“"Well", said Miss Marple. "Are you going to let her get away with it?" There was a pause, then Father brought down his fist with a crash on the table. "No", he roared — "No, by God I'm not!" Miss Marple nodded her head slowly and gravely. "May God have mercy on her soul," she said.”

“Two is enough for a secret.”

“This, Hastings, will be my last case. It will be, too, my most interesting case — and my most interesting criminal.”

“I felt that the murderer was in the room. Sitting with us — listening. one of us”

“I always feel that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they’ve whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.”

“It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid," said Esa. "Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them.”

“There is no such thing as muddle — obscurity, yes — but muddle can exist only in a disorderly brain.”

““Yes, Mr. Lee.” Superintendent Sugden did not wast time on explanations. “What’s all this?””

“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.”