Rex Stout Quotes
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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.
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The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
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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.
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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
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In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.
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Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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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.
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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
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I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
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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.
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Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.
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A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
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Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
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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.
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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.
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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
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