Truth & Deception

Subject:  Truth
Quote:  “Not only is truth stranger than fiction—it is more dramatic.”
Character:  M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story:  “The King of Clubs”
Book Title/Copyright:  The Underdog and Other Stories, 1923


Subject: Truth
Quote:  “The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to the seeker after it.”
Character:  M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story:  12—Round the Table
Book Title/Copyright:  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926


Subject:  Gullibility
Quote:  “Men like Archer and his pals would swear to anything.  There’s no believing a word they say.  We know that.  But the public doesn’t, and the jury’s taken from the public, more’s the pity.  They know nothing, and ten to one believe everything that’s said in the witness box, no matter who it is that says it.”
Character:  Inspector Slack
Chapter/Story:  25
Book Title/Copyright:  Murder at the Vicarage, 1930


Subject:  Telling the Truth
Quote:  “As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife!  Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands.  Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine without batting an eyelash and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least!  Women are wonderful realists.”
Character:  Dr. Giles Reilly
Chapter/Story:  19 – A New Suspicion
Book Title/Copyright:  Murder in Mesopotamia, 1935


Subject:  The Truth Will Out
Quote:  “[T]here is nothing so dangerous for any one who has something to hide as conversation!  Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking.  It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide.  A human being, Hastings, cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality, which conversation gives him.  Every time he will give himself away.”
Character:  M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story:  31 – Hercule Poirot Asks Questions
Book Title/Copyright:  The A.B.C. Murders, 1936


Subject:  Truth and Archaeology
Quote:  “In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it.  You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it.  That is what I have been seeking to do—clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth—the naked shining truth.”
Character:  M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story:  XXVII
Book Title/Copyright:  Death on the Nile, 1938


Subject:  Lying
Quote:  “I don’t mind lying in the least.  To be quite honest I get a lot of artistic pleasure out of my lies.  What gets me down is those moments when one forgets to lie—the times when one is just oneself—and gets result that way that you couldn’t have got any other.”
Character:  Tuppence Beresford
Chapter/Story:  4
Book Title/Copyright:  N or M?, 1941


Subject:  Deception
Quote:  “You know that in all tombs there is always a false door?… Well, people are like that too.  They create a false door—to deceive.  If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority—and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves.  They think, and everybody things, that they are like that.  But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock… And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth—their true self reasserts itself.  For Kait gentleness and submission brought her all she desired—a husband and children.  Stupidity made life easier for her.  But when reality in the form of danger threatened, her true nature appeared.  She did not change, Renisenb—that strength and that ruthlessness were always there.
Character:  Hori
Chapter/Story:  10--III
Book Title/Copyright:  Death Comes as the End, 1944


Subject:  The Worst
Quote:  “You’ve always been a sweet innocent looking creature, Jane, and all the time underneath nothing has ever surprised you, you always believe the worst.”
            “The worst is so often true,” murmured Miss Marple.
Character:  Mrs. Ruth Van Rydock and Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story:  1
Book Title/Copyright:  Murder With Mirrors (They Do It With Mirrors), 1952


Subject:  Premonition
Quote:  “And you’d actually had a premonition that day in church?”
            “I wouldn’t call it a premonition.  It was founded on fact—these things usually are, though one doesn’t always recognize it at the time.  She was wearing her Sunday hat the wrong way round.  Very significant, really, because Grace Lamble was a most precise woman, not at all vague or absent-minded…”
Character:  Mrs. Ruth Van Rydock and Miss Jane Marple.
Chapter/Story:  1
Book Title/Copyright:  Murder With Mirrors (They Do It With Mirrors), 1952