Agatha Christie’s novels were my go-to before the gritty crime book wave hit me. I even got into a bit of a tiff back in college with someone who brushed off Christie as a ‘guilty pleasure,’ singling out Passenger to Frankfurt of all things. Sure, that book wasn’t her crowning glory, but don’t you think a writer should be remembered for their best work, not their worst? Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple ring any bells? And let’s not forget, she was a woman owning it in a man’s world. So, here’s my tribute: a list of the 30 best Agatha Christie quotes that show just how sharp and spot-on our Grand Dame of Mystery was. Enjoy!
1. “Very few of us are what we seem.”
― The Man in the Mist
2. “Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.”
― The Secret Adversary
3. “One’s own troubles sharpen one’s eyes sometimes.”
― Murder at the Vicarage
4. “The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”
― Sad Cypress
5. “That’s the secret of existence. We’re all a little mad.”
― They Do It with Mirrors
6. “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. We’re so busy punishing ourselves.”
― The Moving Finger
7. “The young people think the old people are fools―but the old people know the young people are fools.”
― Murder at the Vicarage
8. “He laughs best who laughs at the end.”
― The Big Four
9. “For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away …”
― After the Funeral
10. “Everybody said, ‘Follow your heart’. I did, it got broken.”
― The Mysterious Affair At Styles
11. “Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory, let the theory go.”
― The Mysterious Affair at Styles
12. “Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition.”
― The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
13. “Love can be a very frightening thing. That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”
― Death on the Nile
14. “Sensationalism dies quickly, fear is long-lived.”
― Death in the Clouds
15. “Hate isn’t creative.”
― Third Girl
16. “Everything is simple, if you arrange the facts methodically.”
― The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
17. “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: An Autobiography
18. “Men, they never think.”
― Ordeal by Innocence
19. “The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don’t give a damn.”
― Sparkling Cyanide
20. “A woman who doesn’t lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.”
― Murder in Mesopotamia
21. “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.”
― The Mysterious Affair at Styles
22. “Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them.”
― Crooked House
23. “It’s like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.”
― The A.B.C. Murders
24. “People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something.”
― A Murder Is Announced
25. “Time is the best killer.”
― Sleeping Murder
26. “Fear is incomplete knowledge.”
― Death Comes as the End
27. “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
― And Then There Were None
28. “I don’t go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it’s insulting. One is only sorry for people if they are sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest stumbling block in our world today.”
― Destination Unknown
29. “To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.”
― The Seven Dials Mystery
30. “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: An Autobiography
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