Subject: Consistency
Quote: “Surely it must be the same…. The—what one used to call the factors at school—are the same. There’s money, and mutual attraction between people of an—er—opposite sex—and there’s queerness, of course—so many people are a little queer, aren’t they?—in fact, most people are when you know them well. And normal people do such astonishing things sometimes, and abnormal people are sometimes so very sane and ordinary. In fact, the only way is to compare people with other people you have known or come across. You’d be surprised if you knew how very few distinct types there are in all.”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 26
Subject: Behavior Modification (failed)
Quote: I smiled, for at the time that Poirot told me that tale, he had instructed me to say “chocolate box” to him if ever I should fancy he was growing conceited! He was then bitterly offended when I used the magical words only a minute and a quarter later.
Character: Captain Arthur Hastings
Chapter/Story: 15—Strange Behavior of Frederica
Book Title/Copyright: Peril at End House, 1931Subject: Behavioral Flaws
Quote: “Most people have got a weakness of some kind or another. Usually it’s plain enough. You can see when a child’s greedy, or bad tempered, or got a streak of the bully in him. You were a good child, very quiet—very sweet tempered—no trouble in any way—and sometimes I’ve worried. Because if there’s a flaw you don’t see, sometimes it wrecks the whole show when the article is tried out.”
Character: Superintendent Battle
Chapter/Story: “Open the Door and Here Are the People”
Book Title/Copyright: Towards Zero, 1944 Subject: Rehearsal
Quote: “[M]y news was not received as I thought it would be.”
“Oh well,” said Dr. MacMaster, “nothing odd in that. Happens every day. We rehearse a thing beforehand in our own minds, it doesn’t matter what it is, consultation with another practitioner, proposal of marriage to a young lady, talk with your boy before going back to school—when the thing comes off, it never goes as you thought it would. You’ve thought it out, you see; all the things that you are going to say and you’ve usually made up your mind what the answers are going to be. And, of course, that’s what throws you off every time. The answers never are what you think they will be.”
Character: Arthur Calgary and Dr. MacMaster
Chapter/Story: 7
Book Title/Copyright: Ordeal by Innocence, 1958
