Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking. - Agatha Christie

One little Indian left all alone, he went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

"Alas," murmured Poirot to his mustaches, "that one can only eat three times a day ..."

Life seems to me to consist of three parts: the absorbing and usually enjoyable present which rushes on from minute to minute with fatal speed; the future, dim and uncertain, for which one can make any number of interesting plans, the wilder and more improbable the better, since — as nothing will turn out as you expect it to do — you might as well have the fun of planning anyway; and thirdly, the past, the memories and realities that are the bedrock of one's present life, brought back suddenly by a scent, the shape of a hill, an old song — some triviality that makes one suddenly say "I remember…" with a peculiar and quite unexplainable pleasure.