“The secret of getting ahead is getting started, and the secret of getting started is breaking your work into small manageable pieces.”
— Agatha Christie
Widely attributed to Christie in writing advice contexts. Reflects her disciplined daily writing practice that produced nearly a novel per year for over five decades.
I wrote sixty-six novels by sitting down every morning and writing. Not waiting for inspiration. Not staring at a blank page. Just writing. One sentence, then another, then a chapter, then a book. People asked me my secret. There was no secret. The secret is that there is no secret. You sit down and you begin.
“People often underestimate what grows slowly. And that is exactly what wins.”
— Agatha Christie
From multiple interviews and her autobiography, frequently cited as one of her most famous personal quotes. Reflects her happy second marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan.
My first husband left me for a younger woman while my mother was dying. I disappeared for eleven days and the newspapers turned it into a circus. But Max Mallowan married me knowing all of that, and for forty-five years he looked at me the way he looked at his excavation finds — with more fascination each time. Some things improve with age. Good marriages are one of them.
“A writer does not need a room of money or a wall of prizes — only a notebook, a steady nerve, and a willingness to be underestimated.”
— Agatha Christie
Composite from Christie's interviews and autobiography, reflecting her lifelong tension with literary critics who dismissed detective fiction as lowbrow entertainment.
The literary establishment never invited me in. No Booker nomination. No serious critical attention. They called me a puzzle-maker, not a novelist. And while they were handing each other awards, I quietly sold two billion books. The readers decided. They always do. Critics come and go. Miss Marple endures.
