I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Age, Aging
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: War
I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Writing
Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Habit, Habits
The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly begin to think for itself and such thinking, remember is original thinking and may have valuable results.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Thinking
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Trust
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about…It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Age
If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Principles, Character
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 the stands in its path.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Motherhood
Too much mercy … often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Mercy
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Marriage, Science, Husbands
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Love
I know there’s a proverb that says ‘To err is human: but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
—Agatha Christie
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
Topics: Criminals, Crime
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Writing
One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Value, Regret
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
Topics: Endurance, Blessings, Adversity, Talent, Curiosity, Living
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.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Ability
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
Topics: Laziness, Idleness
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.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Death
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.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Work
One does what one can, not what one cannot.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Being True to Yourself
That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers—the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: War
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.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Conversation
Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Dogs
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Advice
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.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Unhappiness
Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Evil
I know nothing about pistols and revolvers, which is why I usually kill off my characters with a blunt instrument or better with poisons. Besides, poisons are neat and clean and really exciting… I do not think I could look a really ghastly mangled body in the face. It is the means that I am interested in. I do not usually describe the end, which is often a corpse.
—Agatha Christie
Topics: Authors & Writing
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
- P. D. James British Novelist
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- Beryl Bainbridge British Novelist
- Gladys Bronwyn Stern British Novelist
- Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
- Dodie Smith British Novelist
- H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon English Novelist
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