Rex Stout Quotes

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

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.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

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

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

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.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

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.

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

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

Everything in a story should be credible.

A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality

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

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

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

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

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

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.

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

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

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.

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

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

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.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There's nothing as safe as ignorance or as dangerous.

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

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.

Opinions, from experts, cost money.

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick.

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.

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.

As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter.