"Maybe it is because I am an old man, but I find, M. Poirot, that there is something about the defenselessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless - so sure. So generous and so demanding."

"Sloppy crying had never helped anyone yet."

"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?"

"I've got a very nice staff here. People with patience, you know, and good temper, and not too brainy, because if you have people who are brainy, they are bound to be very impatient."

"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."

"... suppose if something very terrible had happened, so terrible as to be almost unbearable, one might get like that. One might run away from reality into a half world of one's own and then, of course, after a time, one wouldn't be able to get back..."

"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."

"You are lucky, Renisenb. You have found the happiness that is inside everybody's own heart. To most women, happiness means coming and going, busied over small affairs. It is care for one's children and laughter and conversation and quarrels with other women and alternate love and anger with a man. It is made up of small things strung together like beads on a string."

"But what really happens after you are dead - that is what I want to know?I cannot tell you Renisenb. You should ask a priest these questions.He would just give me the usual answers. I want to know.We shall none of us know until we are dead ourselves."

"After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe."

"We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age."

"There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash."

"Sixty-nine was an interesting age--an age of infinite possibilities--an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old--that was different, a tired, discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all? A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died..."

"He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr Jonathan, speaking of Juliet... No Juliet here - unless perhaps one could imagine Juliet a survivor - living on, deprived of Romeo... Was it not an essential part of Juliet's make-up that that she should die young?"

"Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham."

"All Egypt is obsessed with death! And do you know why, Renisenb? Because we have eyes in our bodies, but none in our minds. We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God."

"I think Mrs. Leidner seems happier already from just talking about it. That's always a help, you know. It's bottling things up that makes them get on your nerves."

"In the midst of life, we are in death."

"Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature."

"Juliet singles out Romeo. Desdemona claims Othello. They have no doubts, the young, no fear, no pride."

"One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone. I have nephews and nieces and kind friends---but there's no one who knew me as a young girl---non one who belongs to the old days. I've been alone for quite a long time now."

"You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham.She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?'You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.'That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion."

"The truth is, that one doesn't really know anything about anybody. Not even the people who are nearest to you...''Isn't that going a little too far--exaggerating too much?''I don't think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have made of them for yourself."

"I've always jumped on sentiment-and here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are! I've always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph under my pillow, and dream about him all night. It's dreadful to feel you've been false to your principles."

"One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood."

"To cry at will is not an easy accomplishment."

"What good is money if it can't buy happiness?"

"Edna restored the toffee to the centre of her tongue and sucking pleasurably, resumed her typing of Naked Love by Armand Levine. Its painstaking eroticism left her uninterested--as indeed it did most of Mr. Levine's readers, in spite of his efforts. He was a notable example of the fact that nothing can be duller than dull pornography."

"In fact-Dr. Sheppard!"

"How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician's life. He has to bow to the country's feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be."

"Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human."

"Why harrow oneself by looking on the worst side?... Because it is sometimes necessary."

"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."

"The law. Lady Frances, is an uncertain animal. It has twists and turns that surprise the non-legal mind."

"... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort."

"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."

"What can I say at seventy-five? "Thank God for my good life,and for all the love that has been given to me."

"There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good."

"The Roar of the engine penetrated through Bertram's Hotel from the street outside. Colonel Luscombe perceived that Ladislaus Malinowski was one of Elvira's heroes. "Well," he thought to himself, "better than one of those pop singers or crooners or long-haired Beatles or whatever they called themselves." Luscombe was old-fashioned in his views of young men."

"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."

"It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.""Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant."

"The elephant can remember."

"Thought is yours only. Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it."

"Mrs. Baker's social manner was almost robotlike in its perfection. All her comments and remarks were natural, normal, everyday currency, but one had a suspicion that the whole thing was like an actor playing a part for perhaps the seven hundredth time. It was an automatic performance, completely divorced from what Mrs. Baker might really have been thinking or feeling."

"Women were very queer. Unexpectedly cruel and unexpectedly kind."

"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no aw no pity it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path."

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

"Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go."

"Wwhat the hell? Weve all got to die sometime!"

"What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed."