110+ Agatha Christie Quotes On Writing, Death And Marriage

Agatha Christie was an English writer best known for her detective novels and short stories. She is the best-selling novelist of all time, with works such as Murder on the Orient Express and The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Her books have sold over two billion copies worldwide, making her the most widely published author of all time. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Agatha Christie on writing, love, death.

Top 10 Agatha Christie Quotes

1. 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.
2. An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
3. 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.
4. It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.
5. Instinct is a marvellous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.
6. One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.
7. Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.
8. Fear is incomplete knowledge.
9. 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.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.
• It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.
• Time does not dispose of a question - it only presents it anew in a different guise.
• Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
• Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
• The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.
• To every problem, there is a most simple solution.
• Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.
• I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.
• Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken

Agatha Christie Quotes About Writing

God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards! — Agatha Christie

I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day. — Agatha Christie

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties. — Agatha Christie

All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter...a marble-topped bedroom washstand table made a good place; the dining-room table between meals was also suitable. — Agatha Christie

In old days the public didn't really mind much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on every possible occasion, pointing out flaws. — Agatha Christie

The urge to write one's autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later. — Agatha Christie

Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it. — Agatha Christie

Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations. — Agatha Christie

I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk. — Agatha Christie

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Love

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. — Agatha Christie

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

It's very inconvenient to be loved. Nearly everyone has found that out, sooner or later. The fewer people who love you the less you will have to suffer. — Agatha Christie

The saddest thing in life and the hardest to live through, is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering. — Agatha Christie

That is why most great love stories are tragedies. — Agatha Christie

A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep. — Agatha Christie

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

Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair of causes. It is much more-how shall I say?-fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one's love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting...that the loved one will turn to someone else. — Agatha Christie

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love. — Agatha Christie

If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Death

In the midst of life, we are in death. — Agatha Christie

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? — Agatha Christie

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

And yet," said Poirot, "suppose an accident-" "Ah, no, my friend-" "From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together - by death. — Agatha Christie

I'm afraid of death... Yes, but that doesn't stop death coming. — Agatha Christie

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. [Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.] — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Life

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

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday. — Agatha Christie

Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot] — Agatha Christie

I suppose without curiosity a man would be a tortoise. Very comfortable life, a tortoise has. — Agatha Christie

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. — Agatha Christie

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? — Agatha Christie

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life. — Agatha Christie

The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years. — Agatha Christie

One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers. — Agatha Christie

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Mystery

It's a mystery to me how anyone ever gets any nourishment in this place. They must eat their meals standing up by the window so as to be sure of not missing anything. — Agatha Christie

Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes? — Agatha Christie

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

Life itself is an unsolved mystery", said the clergyman gravely. — Agatha Christie

It is deplorable...to remove all the romance - all the mystery! — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Reading

Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they've seen it often before. — Agatha Christie

She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read. — Agatha Christie

The things young women read nowadays and profess to enjoy positively frighten me. — Agatha Christie

You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About People

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

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows. — Agatha Christie

I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there. — Agatha Christie

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

a lot of trouble has been caused by memoirs. Indiscreet revelations, that sort of thing. People who have been close as an oyster all their lives seem positively to relish causing trouble when they themselves shall be comfortably dead. — Agatha Christie

It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violences for the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely. (Hercule Poirot) — Agatha Christie

It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance. — Agatha Christie

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's. — Agatha Christie

Nurses - nurses, you'm all the same. Full of cheerfulness over other people's troubles. — Agatha Christie

you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Quotes About Sorrow

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

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainty that just to be alive is a grand thing. — Agatha Christie

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

To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived. — Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Famous Quotes And Sayings

It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." ~ Poirot — Agatha Christie

If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid. — 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

You want beauty,' said Hercules Poirot. 'Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth. I want always truth. — Agatha Christie

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself. — Agatha Christie

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

You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age. ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live. — Agatha Christie

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

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

Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has. — Agatha Christie

Coffee in England always tastes like a chemistry experiment. — Agatha Christie

There's nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation. — Agatha Christie

In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth! (Hercule Poirot) — Agatha Christie

Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind. — Agatha Christie

An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her. — Agatha Christie

The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood. — Agatha Christie

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac. — Agatha Christie

I've got an uncle myself. Nobody should be held responsible for their uncles. Nature's little throwbacks - that's how I look at it. — Agatha Christie

Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists. — Agatha Christie

The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. — Agatha Christie

No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought? --Poirot — Agatha Christie

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend. — Agatha Christie

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

Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea! — Agatha Christie

Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together - and they call the result intuition. — Agatha Christie

It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down. — Agatha Christie

Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?' — Agatha Christie

When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island. — Agatha Christie

Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. — Agatha Christie

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas. — Agatha Christie

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

Never do anything yourself that others can do for you. — Agatha Christie

You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely. — Agatha Christie

My remarks are, as always, apt, sound, and to the point. (Hercule Poirot) — Agatha Christie

I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest. — Agatha Christie

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings — Agatha Christie

I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. — Agatha Christie

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

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

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head. — Agatha Christie

Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it all as in the day's work....where crime is concerned, she's the goods. — Agatha Christie

I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries. — Agatha Christie

There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves. — Agatha Christie

The out-of-date returns in due course as the picturesque. — Agatha Christie

The steamship whose machinery is broken may be brought into port and made fast to the dock. She is safe, but not sound. Repairs may last a long time. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first - safety; sanctification gives us the second - soundness. — Agatha Christie

An ugly voice repels me where an ugly face would not. — Agatha Christie

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary. — Agatha Christie

Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind. — Agatha Christie

And so could you know it if you would only use the brains the good God has given you. Sometimes I really am tempted to believe that by inadvertence, He passed you by. — Agatha Christie

The point is that one's got an instinct to live. One doesn't live because one's reason assents to living. People who, as we say, 'would be better dead' don't want to die! People who apparently have everything to live for just let themselves fade out of life because they haven't got the energy to fight. — Agatha Christie

Men don't understand how their mannerisms can get on women's nerves so that you feel you just have to snap. — Agatha Christie

I just woke up feeling happy this morning. You know those days when everything in the world seems right. — Agatha Christie

Talk and tea is his specialty," said Giles. "He has about five cups of tea a day. But he works splendidly when we are looking. — Agatha Christie

I always think loyalty's such a tiresome virtue. — Agatha Christie

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

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

And, of course, afterwards -- one always hears these things afterwards, so much better if one heard them before -- we found out that dozens of empty brandy bottles were taken out of the house every week! — Agatha Christie

One does see so much evil in a village,' murmured Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. — Agatha Christie

If you've had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you. — Agatha Christie

There is something about conscious tact that is very irritating. — Agatha Christie

Mr. Jesmond made a peculiar noise rather like a hen who has decided to lay an egg and then thought better of it. — Agatha Christie

Life Lessons by Agatha Christie

1. Agatha Christie taught us to appreciate the power of storytelling, as her works are some of the most beloved and well-known stories of all time.
2. She also showed us the importance of perseverance, as she wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections despite facing personal tragedies and health issues.
3. Finally, Agatha Christie showed us the power of imagination, as her stories often feature unique and complex plots that keep readers guessing until the very end.