Quotes by Rex Stout - Page 2

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 / Writer
Genius
Sparks
Tire
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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout / Writer
Equality
Made
Trying
Would Be
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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 / Writer
Born
Character
Writing
Contrived
Round
He Or She
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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 / Writer
Fire
Making Love
Thinking
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The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
Rex Stout / Writer
Opportunity
Permit
Satisfaction
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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 / Writer
Assuming
Mistake
Responsibility
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Everyone has something they don't want anyone to see; that is one of the functions of a home, to provide a spot to keep such things.
Rex Stout / Writer
Home
Spots
Want
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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 / Writer
Guy
Helping
Unexpected
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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 / Writer
Book
Two
Writing
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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 / Writer
Ends
Incredibles
Stories
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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 / Writer
Art
Dancing
Gay
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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 / Writer
Men
Ifs And
Lying
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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 / Writer
Damn
Great Writers
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Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.
Rex Stout / Writer
Men
Brain
Thinking
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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 / Writer
Detectives
Lasts
Stories
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The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy.
Rex Stout / Writer
Billions
Entropy
Particles
Womb
Inside
Decisions
Joined
Minute
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I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.
Rex Stout / Writer
Men
Spiritual
Thinking
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To say that 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 / Writer
Animal
Rational
Reasoning
Decisions
Different Thing
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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 / Writer
Character
Fiction
Two
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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 / Writer
Men
Animal
Believe
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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 / Writer
Food
Cooking
Husband
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Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.
Rex Stout / Writer
Buttons
Joy
People
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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 / Writer
Believe
Cutting
Sarcasm
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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 / Writer
Men
Oddities
Technique
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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 / Writer
Abandon
Believe
Disbelief
Effort
Important
Spoiled
Charge
Escape
Extremely
Suspend
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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 / Writer
Home
Book
Chess
Hands
Mail
Manage
Television
Unanswered
Home Me Will
Books
Board
Chore
Detective
Detective Story
Hand
Package
Television Set
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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 / Writer
Ego
Party
President
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I'm not a collector. I don't keep letters, or books, or souvenirs. But I do keep one copy of each translation of my books into a foreign language. Have you ever seen a murder story printed in Singhalese? Wow!
Rex Stout / Writer
Book
Letters
Stories
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All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
Rex Stout / Writer
Decision
Important
Thinking
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A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.
Rex Stout / Writer
Ideas
People
Thinking
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What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.
Rex Stout / Writer
Running
Believe
Mean
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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 / Writer
Women
Experts
Female
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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 / Writer
Numbers
President
Years
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A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.
Rex Stout / Writer
Bakers
Character
Real
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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 / Writer
Cooking
Female
Kitchen
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I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.
Rex Stout / Writer
Vacation
Book
Children
Sleep
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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 / Writer
America
Essentials
Sweet
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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 / Writer
Detectives
Foxes
Rivals
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Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.
Rex Stout / Writer
Book
Kitchen
Writing
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I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.
Rex Stout / Writer
Democracy
Mean
Thinking
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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 / Writer
Men
Summer
Sweet
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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 / Writer
Book
Drinking
Sleep
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Rex Stout Quotes - Page 2

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