Rex Stout Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

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.

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.

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.

I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

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.

The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach.

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.

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

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.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls.