“The man irritated her just like a rash.”

“Busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wallpaper.”

“She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.”

“It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”

“Masterly inactivity may be prudence to one man, desperate rashness to another.”

“It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, that she was needed.”

“Savages…are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.”

“I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion.”

“I like to work alone, because it irritates me if people say something stupid — I just can’t stand it… I have a Polish guy who comes in and cleans the studio, but pretty much no one else. [talking over a cappuccino, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, during her show there in 2013]”

““Tcha! Tcha!” cried Poirot irritably. “You argue like a child.””