To dear Peter, most faithful of friends and dearest of companions, a dog in a thousand.
Thought is yours only. Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it.
I don’t think it’s healthy for a man to be always brooding over crime and detective stories, reading up all sorts of cases. It puts ideas into his head.
You know I want you. You know that I’d give my soul to pick you up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, forever and ever.
He was going to succeed. As a first test of will, he determined to master his stammer. He practised speaking slowly, with a slight hesitation between every word. And in time his efforts were crowned with success. He no longer stammered. In school he applied himself to his lessons. He intended to have education. Education got you somewhere. Soon his teachers became interested, encouraged him. He won a scholarship. His parents were approached by the educational authorities – the boy had promise.
A secret de Polichinelle is a secret that everyone can know. For this reason the people who do not know it never hear about it – for if everyone thinks you know a thing, nobody tells you.
I do think you should be more careful how you choose your friends. You are so credulous, dear, so easily gulled. I suppose it is being a writer and having so much imagination. If you were older and had more experience of life you would have been on guard at once.
The Kiddles had come and conquered. Life was stronger than death.
She looked, Inspector Curry reflected, exactly as the relict of a canon of the Established Church should look – which was almost odd, because so few people ever did look like what they really were. Even the tight line of her lips had an ascetic ecclesiastical flavour. She expressed Christian Endurance, and possibly Christian Fortitude. But not, Curry thought, Christian Charity.
Oh, you still don’t understand,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve fallen in love with her, and I’d like you to give me a divorce as soon as it can be arranged.’ I suppose, with those words, that part of my life–my happy, successful confident life–ended. It was not as quick as that, of course–because I couldn’t believe.
If his father couldn’t see that, of course, you joked about a thing because you had felt badly about it – well, he couldn’t see it! It wasn’t the sort of thing you could explain.
Young men are sadly degenerate nowadays. Father says so. They don’t enjoy being uncomfortable and doing dangerous and unpleasant things any longer. It’s a pity.
Hate isn’t creative.” – Stillingfleet.
This is real life; and real life stops just where it chooses.
Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide. 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.
Funerals are absolutely fatal for a man of your age.
I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards – when I grew up – that things seemed always to go wrong.
L’amour, it causes many fatalities, does it not?
But seriously Poirot, what a hobby! Compare that to – ” his voice sank to an appreciative purr – “an easy chair in front of a wood fire in a long low room lined with books – must be a long room – not a square one. Books all round one. A glass of port – and a book open in your hand. Time rolls back as you read.
The Agatha Christie Collection Christie Crime Classics The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr Quin The Sittaford.