Cards On The Table Quotes
"There was something in his eye that was unusual. One would have said that this chance encounter awakened in him an emotion that he seldom had occasion to feel."
"A fine mustache - a very fine mustache - the only mustache in London, perhaps, that could compete with that of Monsieur Hercule Poirot."
"Every healthy Englishman who saw him longed earnestly and fervently to kick him!"
"He existed richly and beautifully in a super flat in Park Lane. He gave wonderful parties - large parties, small parties, macabre parties, respectable parties, and definitely "queer" parties."
"People nearly always felt that it would be better not to risk offending Mr. Shaitana."
"It is true that I have a thoroughly bourgeois attitude to murder."
"For you see, Mr. Shaitana, the tiger might spring."
"I do not play," he said. "Bridge is not one of the games that amuse me."
"Mrs. Oliver had lost three pounds and seven shillings at bridge and that she had been a cheerful loser."
"Murderers look and behave very much like everybody else. Nice, quiet, well-behaved reasonable folk, very often."
"In real life people don't bother about being too subtle, Mrs. Oliver," said the superintendent. "They usually stick to arsenic because it's nice and handy to get hold of."
"Poison is a woman's weapon," he said. "There must be many secret woman poisoners - never found out."
"The stupid little man! Oh, the stupid little man," murmured Hercule Poirot. "To dress up as the devil and try to frighten people. Quel enfantillage!"
"You realize, perhaps, Mrs. Lorrimer, that with a weapon like that a woman could do the trick just as easily as a man."
"But all the same," said Superintendent Battle, "the woman would have to be pretty desperate. It was a long chance to take."
"I should not care to do anything of the kind. I consider that a most improper question."
"Address, please," he mumbled, drawing his notebook toward him.
"Would it be a proper question, madame, to ask you your opinion of your companions not as potential murderers but as bridge players?"
"One of 'em did it," said Battle. "One of 'em's lying like hell. But which? It's not easy - no, it's not easy."
"The angelic face masking the demon," mused Mrs. Oliver.
"Man is an unoriginal animal," said Hercule Poirot.
"Women," said Mrs. Oliver, "are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running."
"He was not nice, no," said Poirot. "But he was alive - and now he is dead and, as I told him once, I have a bourgeois attitude to murder. I disapprove of it."
"Courage, my friend. I know your patience. In the end, you will have perhaps as many legs as a centipede."
"A straightforward, honest, zealous officer doing his duty in the most laborious manner - that's my style. No frills. No fancy work, Just honest perspiration. Stolid and a bit stupid - that's my ticket."
"To our respective methods - and may success crown our joint efforts."
"It is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished, madame."
"Man is always in danger - from traffic, from germs, from a hundred and one things. As well be killed one way as another."
"The moment you begin being careful of yourself, adopting as your motto 'Safety first,' you might as well be dead, in my opinion."
"Writing's not particularly enjoyable. It's hard work like everything else."
"I always think I've finished and then when I count up I find I've only written thirty thousand words instead of sixty thousand and so then I have to throw in another murder and get the heroine kidnaped again. It's all very boring."
"Life is a difficult business. It needs infinite courage and a lot of endurance."
"Once a man is imbued with the idea that he knows who ought to be allowed to live and who ought not - then he is half way to becoming the most dangerous killer there is, the arrogant criminal who kills not for profit but for an idea. He has usurped the functions of le bon Dieu."
"I don't believe there's more to it than that. Despard's a white man, and I don't believe he's ever been a murderer."
"He knows men, Colonel Race does. But all the same, one can't take anything for granted."
"Cards on the table. That's the motto for this business. I mean to play fair."
"No, as Monsieur Poirot said, there's only one hope - the past."
"You've been the goods, Mrs. Oliver. You're a much better detective than that long lanky Laplander of yours."
"It is impossible not to give oneself away - unless one never opens one's mouth!"
"The whole thing is pure hypothesis. All we can say is, It might be."
"Madame, madame, I will come out into the open. I will place my cards upon the table."
"I know very well that it was not you who shot him. It was Major Despard. But you were the cause."
"There are some women like that. Wherever they go, tragedies follow in their wake. It is not their fault."
"Whether they try to hinder or to help, they necessarily reveal their type of mind."
"I have left her to the end. But I shall question her, too, as to what she remembers in that room."
"True, mademoiselle. One must play the cricket. As one of your poets so finely says, 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not cricket more.'"
"The worst that they can say about her is that she doesn't suffer fools gladly!"
"It is in Roberts's case. It remains to be seen if it is in Miss Meredith's."
"In any case, it is doubtful if she would have lived to stand her trial. She was a very ill woman."
"It is a possibility at least. I may accompany you?"
"But there are possibilities. You never know."
"What is one always afraid of in these cases?"
"It made a difference, you see. A month - two months perhaps - not more. And then, just as I left the specialist, I saw Miss Meredith."
"It was clever of you to foresee that - the weariness, the loneliness -"
"No, really, Anne, don't answer with half your mind on a crossword puzzle. I want you to attend to me."
"Little Meredith caught her round the ankle and tipped her in. My God, that's her fourth murder!"