“Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in favour of the deceased. I heard what you said just now to my friend Hastings. ‘A nice bright girl with no men friends.’...”
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Author detail
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's finishing school in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. While he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which wasn't published until four years later. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She was happy in the early years of her second marriage, and did not divorce her husband despite his many affairs. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born. Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, and ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England in the 1920s and '30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Quotes
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“Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in favour of the deceased. I heard what you said just now to my friend Hastings. ‘A nice bright girl with no men friends.’...”
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“Death was for-the other people.”
“It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.”
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“What good is money if it can't buy happiness?”
“People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something. I've known many an invalid who has suffered worse and been cut off from life much mo...”
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“One always has hope for human nature”
“When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so.”
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“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.”
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“Do you remember these words: ‘What Lamp has Destiny to guide Her little Children stumbling in the Dark? “A Blind Understanding,” Heaven replied. ‘Geoffrey has that—a blind understanding. All...”
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“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.”
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“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing,...”
“Un archeologo è il miglior marito che una donna possa avere: più lei diventa vecchia, più lui s'interessa a lei.”
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“Whatever people say, there is right, there is wrong. There is nothing in between.' - Hercule Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express)”
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“It’s frightening, you know, how soon money goes if you’re not clever about it.”
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“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 i...”
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“When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A mur...”
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“One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.”
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“It's dangerous to know too much.”
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“Meanwhile we have learnt something, and to know is to be prepared.”
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“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 a...”