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Agatha Christie

b: Torquay, Devon, England, Sep 15, 1890

d: Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England, Jan 12, 1976

Dame Agatha Christie, DBE, was a British crime writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels - especially those featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple - and her successful West End theatre plays.

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A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he's in love with her.

But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.

Coffee in England always tastes like a chemistry experiment.

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.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

Every man should have aunts. They illustrate the triumph of guess work over logic.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

Every woman should marry an archaeologist because she grows increasingly attractive to him as she grows increasingly to resemble a ruin.

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.

Gwenda Reed stood, shivering a little, on the quayside. The docks and the custom sheds and all of England that she could see were gently waving up and down. And it was in that moment that she made her decision--the decision that was to lead to such very momentous events.

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.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

I have learnt that I am me, that I can do the things that, as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do.

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.

I learned ... that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back - that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one-way street, isn't it?

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.

I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't luckily have to bother about that.

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.

If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.

It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.

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

Marriage is an extraordinary thing, and I doubt if any outsider - even a child of the marriage - has the right to judge.

Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window. The window looked over her garden, once a source of pride to her. That was no longer so. Nowadays she looked out of the window and winced.

Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice

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

One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.

There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! 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.

There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.

To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy, but one would not be without that experience.

War settles nothing . . . to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

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