The Thirteen Problems Quotes
"My dear Aunt, keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid that I should in any way shatter them."
"So many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly."
"Imagination is a very dangerous thing, as we lawyers know only too well."
"The art of writing gives one an insight into human nature."
"For psychology and imagination go to the writer."
"I have dropped another stitch. I have been so interested in the story."
"We have got a superstition here, lady. If anyone sees those bloodstains that there will be a death within twenty-four hours."
"There is a great deal of wickedness in village life. I hope you dear young people will never realize how very wicked the world is."
"Some of the men who have written on the subject are men whose testimony I would accept unhesitatingly."
"Life will not pass them by. Strange and exciting events will surround her."
"Things are bound to happen to that woman, or because of her."
"There is nothing that you can tell me about people’s minds that would astonish or surprise me."
"Human nature is much the same in a village as anywhere else."
"You see, right at the time there was one queer thing."
"There must be many lonely women, proud and reticent, in just that position."
"I went and saw her, did my best to ridicule the whole thing; but without success."
"These women all lose their heads over a good-looking clergyman. You hear of it over and over again."
"I suggest that Miss Barton was always mentally unhinged... Miss Barton learns of this and decides on extermination."
"I’m afraid I don’t, Sir Henry. I think her end shows her to have been a very clever and resourceful woman."
"You always laugh at me, Sir Henry. It wouldn’t—to you. But some of the families were very poor, and the old age pension was a great boon to the children."
"One old woman being so like any other old woman."
"Why should the rich employer kill the humble companion? It’s so much more likely to be the other way about."
"It’s just Mrs Trout over again. Mrs Trout was very good at red herrings, but she met her match in me."
"She was the eldest of a family of nine, all wretchedly poor... Amy Barton then and there seems to have decided on her plan of cold-blooded murder."
"They will get me, Sir Henry. Not a doubt of it."
"I have learned one thing through bitter experience. Never say to yourself that anyone is above suspicion."
"Never say crime goes unpunished; but cause and effect works outside the law."
"In all Honesty I can’t say I envy them the trip."
"She commits a cold-blooded murder and gets off scot-free!"
"She doesn’t, my dear. She was only a person—not a very nice person—in the village."
"Never two without three. I’ve proved it true time and again."
"It’s very difficult to say just what you want. One gets things mixed up and tells the wrong things first."
"But human nature is much the same everywhere, and, of course, one has opportunities of observing it at closer quarters in a village."
"You were up against an unbreakable alibi. Joe Ellis was fixing shelves in the kitchen all the evening, and Mrs Bartlett was watching him do it."
"I know. I’m in a position to know; but if I gave my reasons for knowing to Inspector Drewitt—well, he’d simply laugh."
"If I were to tell you that I know because of a man called Peasegood leaving turnips instead of carrots when he came round with a cart and sold vegetables to my niece several years ago."
"I don’t think I can do that. Because, you see, I haven’t got any—what you call knowledge."
"We hunted down the wild boar in the mountains before he came down and killed the children by the brook. Those were our enemies—and we destroyed them."
"She was a bad lot, sir. I wouldn’t say so before Joe. She took him in good and proper. That kind can—more’s the pity. You know how it is, sir."
"I thought, ‘That’s very interesting.’ So you all give it up, then? That’s very interesting."