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Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction”, Christie has been called the “Queen of Crime”. She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
| Born | Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller 15 September 1890 Torquay, Devon, England |
|---|---|
| Died | 12 January 1976 (aged 85) Winterbrook House, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England |
| Resting place | Church of St Mary, Cholsey, Oxfordshire |
| Pen name | Mary Westmacott |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, memoirist |
| Genre | Murder mystery, detective story, crime fiction, thriller |
| Literary movement | Golden Age of Detective Fiction |
| Notable works |
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List of quotes
| Never do anything yourself that others can do for you. |
| 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. |
| It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. |
| It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. |
| If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody. |
| 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. |
| I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest. |
| Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human. |
| 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. |
| I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. |
| One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late. |
| 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 married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me. |
| One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood. |
| The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes. |
| The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don’t give a damn. |
| 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. |
| The secret of getting ahead is getting started. |
| There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger. |
| Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity. |
| These little grey cells. It is up to them. |
| Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it. |
| Too much mercy… often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second. |
| Very few of us are what we seem. |
| Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody. |
| Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more. |
| There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. |
| An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her. |
| Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them. |
| 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. |
| I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. |
| Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he’s in love with her. |
| Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend. |
| But surely for everything you have to love you have to pay some price. |
| An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her. |
| 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. |
| The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes. |
| There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. |
| Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody. |
