By Alfred Hitchcock
From Murder on the Orient Express
Hercule Poirot: You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.
Mary Debenham: That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.
Women and Nature have almost exactly the same reactions! Remember it is better to take the largest plate within reach and fling it at a woman’s head than it is to wriggle like a worm whenever she looks at you!
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| — | From Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie |
It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overheard, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in my life, ever.
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| — | from The Secret History by Donna Tartt |
