Subject: Age and Respectable Women
Quote: “If you read the papers carefully, you will find that often a nice respectable woman of that age leaves a husband she has lived with for twenty years, and sometimes a whole family of children as well, in order to link her life with that of a young man considerably her junior…. In the autumn of a woman’s life, there comes always one mad moment when she longs for romance, for adventure—before it is too late.”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: “The Cornish Mystery”
Book Title/Copyright: The Underdog and Other Stories, 1923
Subject: Age and Compromise
Quote: “I’ve a theory that one can always get anything one wants if one will pay the price. And do you know what the price is, nine times out of ten? Compromise. A beastly thing, compromise, but it steals upon you as you near middle age. It’s stealing upon me now. To get the woman I want I’d—I’d even take up regular work.”
Character: Anthony Cade
Chapter/Story: 22—The Red Signal
Book Title/Copyright: The Secret of Chimneys, 1925
Subject: Young vs. Old
Quote: “I remember a saying of my Great Aunt Fanny’s. I was sixteen at the time and thought it particularly foolish…. She used to say, ‘The young people think the old people are fools—but the old people know the young people are fools!’”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 31
Book Title/Copyright: Murder at the Vicarage, 1930
Subject: Older Women
Subject: Older Women
Quote: “I’m worrying about you. You’ve been squandering your birthright…. What are the years from twenty to forty? Fettered and bound by personal and emotional relationships. That’s bound to be. That’s living. But later there’s a new stage. You can think, observe life, discover something about other people and the truth about yourself. Life becomes real—significant. You see it as a whole. Not just one scene—the scene you, as an actor, are playing. No man or woman is actually himself (or herself) til after forty-five. That’s when individuality has a chance.”
Character: Mr. Parker Pyne
Chapter/Story: “Problem at Pollensa Bay”
Book Title/Copyright: The Regatta Mystery, 1932
Subject: Age and College Boys
Quote: “Boys of that age are so difficult—especially when they are intellectual… One wishes that they could put off being intellectual until they were rather older. As it is, they always glower at one so and bit their nails and seem to have so many spots and sometimes an Adam’s apple as well. And they either won’t speak at all, or else are very loud and contradictory.”
Character: Lucy Angkatell
Chapter/Story: 1
Book Title/Copyright: Murder After Hours (The Hollow), 1946
Subject: Age and Knees
Quote: “Knees are a very good indication of age. The knees of a woman of twenty-three or twenty-four can never really be mistaken for the knees of a girl of fourteen or fifteen.”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: 23—Showdown
Book Title/Copyright: Cat Among the Pigeons, 1959
Subject: Will to Live
Quote: “Life is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. When you’re young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn’t really important at all. It’s young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting.”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 17—Mr. Rafiel Takes Charge
Book Title/Copyright: A Caribbean Mystery, 1964
