Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
(Attributed)
Quotations by:
Christie, Agatha
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
(Attributed)
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
(Attributed)
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
An Autobiography (1977)
I didn’t want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself.
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
Exactly! It is absurd — improbable — it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
Murder on the Orient Express [Poirot] (1934)
The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
Murder on the Orient Express [Poirot] (1934)
To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but all the same … one would not be without that experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The ABC Murders, ch. 17 (1936)
A human being, Hastings, cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away.
I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle since precariously arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passageway from the street. Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way around. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd [Poirot] (1926)
I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Mysterious Affair at Styles [Poirot] (1920)
Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, ch. 5 [Poirot] (1916, pub. 1920)
(Source)
Poirot, chiding Hastings' unfounded speculations.
Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Ch. 11 (Poirot) (1911)
I’ve a theory that one can always get anything one wants if one will pay the price. And do you know what the price is, nine times out of ten? Compromise.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) English writer
The Secret of Chimneys, ch. 22 [Anthony Cade] (1925)
(Source)