Quotes from book

Death on the Nile

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

“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?”

“But to succeed in life every detail should be arranged well beforehand.”

““Darling,” she drawled, “won’t that be rather tiresome? If any misfortunes happen to my friends I always drop them at once! It sounds heartless, but it saves such a lot of trouble later!””

“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.”

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

“It was a very British and utterly unconvincing performance.”

“It’s so dreadfully easy — killing people… And you begin to feel that it doesn’t matter… That it’s only you that matters! It’s dangerous — that.”

“And Mr. Burnaby said acutely: "Well, it doesn't seem to have done her much good, poor lass." But after a while they stopped talking about her and discussed instead who was going to win the Grand National. For, as Mr. Ferguson was saying at that minute in Luxor, it is not the past that matters but the future.”

“There’s no reason why women shouldn’t behave like rational beings,” said Simon stolidly.
Poirot said dryly:
“Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!”

“How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.”

““That’s all very well — they’re not educated, poor creatures.”
“No, and a good thing too. Education has devitalised the white races. Look at America — goes in for an orgy of culture. Simply disgusting.””