"I’m used to that. It often seems to me that’s all detective work is — wiping out your false starts and beginning again."

Agatha Christie Literature See all quotes by Agatha Christie →

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“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.”

“The rottenness comes from within.”

“It would be difficult Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons.”

“Ah, my friend, one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.”

“We had three servants, which was a minimum then.”

“‘I have often noticed that being a devoted wife saps the intellect,’ murmured Tommy.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed."

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Literature1804–1864

#art

"Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9", interview by Robert Hunter Wilbur, in The Paris Review"

— Conrad Aiken

Literature1889–1973

#art

"Artists and actors of color have to alter and water ourselves down for Hollywood, but I refuse to be pacified."

— Viola Davis

Entertainment1965

#art

"The views of Tito and his associates showed from the very beginning that they were far from being “hard-line Marxists”, as the bourgeoisie calls the consistent Marxists, but “reasonable Marxists”, who…"

— Enver Hoxha

Politics1908–1985

#philosophy