The saddest thing in life and the hardest to live through, is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering.
Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]
And, of course, afterwards -- one always hears these things afterwards, so much better if one heard them before -- we found out that dozens of empty brandy bottles were taken out of the house every week!
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.
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?
... the belief in a superstratum of human beings ... is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men' -- you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: -- humility and brotherhood.
That is what I mean. A bath! The receptacle of porcelain, one turns the taps and fills it, one gets in, one gets out and ghoosh - ghoosh - ghoosh, the water goes down the waste pipe!" "M. Poirot are you quite mad?" "No, I am extremely sane.