Rex Stout quotes

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
-- Rex Stout

#Strong #Moral #Standards

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.
-- Rex Stout

#Book #Years #People

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
-- Rex Stout

#Pleasant Surprises #Pessimist #Optimist

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
-- Rex Stout

#Wealth #Fortitude #Disadvantages

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
-- Rex Stout

#Writing #Mind #Shadow

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.
-- Rex Stout

#Stories #Scene #Holmes

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold -- if you have one.
-- Rex Stout

#Brain

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
-- Rex Stout

#Keys #Glasses

If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you're surprised if a National Chairman calls you to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you're not really surprised.
-- Rex Stout

#Party #Ego #President

I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.
-- Rex Stout

#Mistake #Responsibility #Assuming

Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.
-- Rex Stout

#Men #Labels #Primitive

Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.
-- Rex Stout

#Two #Faces #Dignity

A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
-- Rex Stout

#Jewels #Guests #Hospitality

Opinions, from experts, cost money.
-- Rex Stout

#Experts #Cost #Opinion

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.
-- Rex Stout

#Thinking #Fire #Making Love

Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it.
-- Rex Stout

#Never Quit #Spirals #Obvious

Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn't leak and no tire is flat.
-- Rex Stout

#Genius #Sparks #Tire

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.
-- Rex Stout

#Tongue #Body #Submit

MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
-- Rex Stout

#Mean #Rude

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
-- Rex Stout

#Men #Library #May

As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.
-- Rex Stout

#Guy #Unexpected #Helping

I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know. (Nero Wolfe)
-- Rex Stout

#Trying #Want #Needs

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
-- Rex Stout

#Work #Humorous #Science

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
-- Rex Stout

#Book #Writing #Two

We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
-- Rex Stout

#Luck #Merit

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.
-- Rex Stout

#Broke #Disgrace #Catastrophe

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
-- Rex Stout

#World #Coincidence #Expected

There's nothing as safe as ignorance or as dangerous.
-- Rex Stout

#Ignorance #Safe #Dangerous

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.
-- Rex Stout

#Book #Writing #Two

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone.
-- Rex Stout

#Cooking #Kitchen #Female

Bosh. I find a rival - but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner - I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you...
-- Rex Stout

#Detectives #Foxes #Rivals

The incredible thing happens at the beginning of the story always, you notice, not the end. A Sherlock Holmes story is never a trick story.
-- Rex Stout

#Stories #Incredibles #Holmes

Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.
-- Rex Stout

#Lasts #Detectives #Firsts

There are damn few great writers and I'm not one of them. While I could afford to I played with words. When I could no longer afford that I wrote for money.
-- Rex Stout

#Great Writers

One trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year. And I'd like to live another year so that Nixon won't be President. If he's re-elected I'll have to live another four years.
-- Rex Stout

#Years #Numbers #President

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
-- Rex Stout

#Literature #Trials #Obscenity

Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.
-- Rex Stout

#Believe #Cutting #Sarcasm

There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions - is he tall, is he short? - he had better quit.
-- Rex Stout

#Character #Two #Fiction

God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
-- Rex Stout

#Equality #Trying #Would Be

To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.
-- Rex Stout

#Joy #Detectives #Finesse

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
-- Rex Stout

#Ideas #Depth #Shallow

Everything in a story should be credible.
-- Rex Stout

#Stories #Should

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
-- Rex Stout

#Games #Detectives #Balls

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.
-- Rex Stout

#Character #Born #Flats

No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.
-- Rex Stout

#Lying #Men #Ifs And

You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.
-- Rex Stout

#Art #Gay #Dancing

Chili is one of the great peasant foods. It is one of the few contributions America has made to world cuisine. Eaten with corn bread, sweet onion, sour cream, it contains all five of the elements deemed essential by the sages of the Orient: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter.
-- Rex Stout

#Sweet #America #Onions

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
-- Rex Stout

#Luck #Occasions

Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia... ...Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures. Looking at him, I said to myself, "He's in a battle with the elements. He's fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That's the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination." I said aloud, "You mustn't go to sleep, sir, it's fatal. You freeze to death." The League of Frightened Men
-- Rex Stout

#Drinking #Book #Sleep

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.
-- Rex Stout

#Summer #Sweet #Men

Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
-- Rex Stout

#Fear #Dodge #Folly

I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
-- Rex Stout

#Thinking #Two #Stories

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
-- Rex Stout

#Fun #Reading #Writing

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.
-- Rex Stout

#Busy #Being Myself #Too Busy

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
-- Rex Stout

#Book #Home #Hands

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.
-- Rex Stout

#Believe #Effort #Important

To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
-- Rex Stout

#Believe #Men #Animal

The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
-- Rex Stout

#Alarms #Trouble #Absurd

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
-- Rex Stout

#Men #Oddities #Would Be

A hole in the ice is dangerous only to those who go skating.
-- Rex Stout

#Ice #Safety #Skating

No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket.
-- Rex Stout

#Women #Taken #Tickets

Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
-- Rex Stout

#Women #Intellectual #Process

I was reminding myself of the one basic rule for experts on females: confine yourself absolutely to explaining why she did what she has already done because that will save the trouble of explaining why she didn't do what you said she would.
-- Rex Stout

#Women #Done #Experts

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.
-- Rex Stout

#Women #Mean #Men

The fricassee with dumplings is made by a Mrs. Miller whose husband has left her four times on account of her disposition and returned four times on account of her cooking...
-- Rex Stout

#Husband #Cooking #Four