“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“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.”

“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”

“It wasn't what you were born to, and no good comes from getting out of your station in life.”

“You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence. If you are properly modest, you will never write it at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later, you wonder if it may not be all right after all.”

“Best of an island is once you get there - you can't go any farther...you've come to the end of things...”

“Got on! Got on! It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success.”