Ariadne Oliver quotes from Agatha Christie's Poirot

Good to see you, Shaitana. I'm not late, am I? An elderly patient called me out. She thought she had a tumor. I thought she was depressed.

Mr. Shaitana

And what did you prescribe?

Champagne and oysters at Wilton's. She'll be right as rain by tomorrow.

Ariadne Oliver

[sotto voce, to Poirot] Remind me never to go to him if I'm poorly.

Ariadne Oliver

It's jolly curious. Here are the four of us and we're all, well, for want of a better word, sleuths. So who are those four in there?

Colonel Hughes

Criminals?

Ariadne Oliver

They don't look like criminals.

Most criminals don't look like criminals, Mrs. Oliver.

Ariadne Oliver

Have you redecorated?

Hercule Poirot

No, madame. I have moved.

Ariadne Oliver

Of course. How silly of me not to remember. What was wrong with your last apartment? Walls not straight enough?

Hercule Poirot

You've hit the nail right on the head.

Colonel Hughes

[after Poirot reveals Shaitana's killer] But why did Shaitana drug himself?

Hercule Poirot

He is tired of life. He has a madness in his soul. He is searching for a thrill that would be for him the ultimate. And in order to achieve this, he invites four people to his house whom he believe have killed, and then he goads them.

Mr. Shaitana

[flashback, the night of the murder] There's always an accident. A shooting accident, for example. Or a domestic accident. One of the little tragedies that never gets reported.

Hercule Poirot

And then he takes the sleeping draught so that when it happens he will feel no pain. And it does happen. And as an extra twist, he tries to throw the blame on one of us. He makes us to believe that the crime that is opportunistic is made to look as though it was planned most carefully. And we start ... Oh, pardon, even Hercule Poirot, he starts to believe it. When all the time the plan was to allow a crime that was opportunistic to happen.

Ariadne Oliver

As a plot, that is distinctly odd.

Hercule Poirot

The plots, madame, they are all the same. It is only the psychology that is different.

Ariadne Oliver

Robin Upward was in the clear. He and I were working all day on that wretched dramatisation. Now he wants Sven having sex in a sauna. Sven has never had sex in his life. You don't know how I suffer.

Hercule Poirot

Madame, I, too, suffer. The cooking of Madame Summerhayes, it is beyond description. Well, it is not cooking at all. And the currents of the cold air, the long hairs of the dogs, the chairs, the terrible, terrible beds in which I try to sleep. And the coffee ... Words cannot describe to you the fluid they serve to you as coffee.

Ariadne Oliver

What a calculating mind. Tortuous. That's what I call it. Tortuous.

Hercule Poirot

Am I so calculating, madame? Am I the solver of puzzles with a heart that is cold? Or are we looking at the greatest of mysteries that life ever throws up? The mystery that even I, Hercule Poirot, will never be able to solve. The nature of love.

Would you all be dears and help round up the little waifs and strays? Some of the older ones gravitate to the cloakrooms and what have you.

Whatever for?

Ariadne Oliver

What have you, I should think.

Hercule Poirot

Chère madame, you should not work, you should rest.

Ariadne Oliver

I have deadlines, Poirot, in sickness and in health.

Ariadne Oliver

Give me one moment of your time. My friend Margaret Ravenscroft died a horrible death. I have to find out why. What should I do?

Hercule Poirot

Bien sûr. Madame, what have you told to me? A husband and wife who never argue, who live in complete harmony. Whoever has heard of such a thing?! There was a motive. There is always a motive. And if the police, they could not find this motive at the time, then this motive, it is ... How do you say? It is unorthodox. The answer, madame, lies in the past. You must delve into the past. You say they lived near to Eastbourne? You have acquaintance there? Then go! Allez-y! Allez-y! Drive about, ask the questions. Be the person with a nose.

Ariadne Oliver

Oh, I see. Someone will remember something.

Hercule Poirot

Always someone remembers something.

Ariadne Oliver

You mean elephants. [off Poirot's confused look] Sorry. I was thinking of elephants at that dinner last night.

Hercule Poirot

With hesitation, I ask why?

Ariadne Oliver

Because the meringue got stuck in my teeth.

Hercule Poirot

I see. Well, the pathway of logic, it is there somewhere, but...

Ariadne Oliver

Meringue, dentures. Ivory, elephants. Must find the elephants. Elephants can remember.

Ariadne Oliver

You and I are elephants, you know. We're good at remembering.

Hercule Poirot

Non, non, non, madame. We are the human beings. And human beings, mercifully, they can forget.

Ariadne Oliver

I'm well aware you think me irrational.

Hercule Poirot

Madame, one calls things by different names, hein? It may indeed be that you have seen something, it may indeed be that you have heard something. And it may be, if I may so put it, that you do not know what it is that you know. You are aware only of the result. And that, madame, it is your intuition.