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.
Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's finger and say, "It all began that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident?
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.
There speaks the passion and the rebellion that go with red hair. My second wife had red hair. She was a beautiful woman, and she loved me. Strange, is it not? I have always admired red-haired women. Your hair is very beautiful. There are other things I like about you. Your spirit, your courage; the fact that you have a mind of your own. ~Mr. Aristides
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.
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
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.
Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.
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.
I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But-incongruous as it may seem to some-I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.