Rex Stout Quotes

Nature has arranged that when you overcome a given inertia the resulting momentum is proportionate. If I were to begin borrowing money I would end by devising means of persuading the Secretary of the Treasury to lend me the gold reserve.

I suspected the movies, considering her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no one can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

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

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.

Is this Nero Wolfe's house?" The voice got me one-half awake. "Yes. Archie Goodwin." "This is Sarah Jaffee. I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Goodwin, did I wake you up?" "Not quite. Go ahead and finish it.

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

When I told [Lily Rowan] I wouldn't be able to make it to the Polo Grounds tomorrow, she began to call Wolfe names, and thought of several new ones that showed her wide experience and fine feeling for words.

It was quite conceivable that Miss Tenzer had aroused in some man, possibly Richard Valdon, the kind of reaction that is an important factor in the propagation of the species; in fact, in more men than one.

Every man alive is half idiot & half hero. Only heroes could survive in this maelstrom & only idiots would want to.

Of course the Times tried to insist on speaking with Wolfe. When the last trumpet sounds the Times will want to check with Gabriel himself, and for the next edition will try to get it confirmed by even Higher Authority.

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.

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

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.

I had been wrong about him Tuesday when I figured that he had always been fifty years old and always would be. He had already put on at least five years, and he had shrunk. Instead of tagging him a neat little squirt I would now call him a magnified beetle.

Do you know that she came here Monday afternoon and spent some hours in this house?" "Yes, I know." "Do you know what she came for?" "I know nothing definite. I have heard conjectures." "I won't ask you from whom or what. I am aware, Miss Duday, that in coming here this evening you people were impelled only partly by the threat of a legal action by Mrs. Jaffee. You also hoped to learn what Miss Eads came to see me for and what she said. I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. I have given a complete report to the police, or Mr. Goodwin has, and if they don't care to publish it neither do I. But I will ask you, do you know of any reason why, on Monday, Miss Eads should have decided to seek seclusion? Was she being harassed or frightened by anyone?" "On Monday?" "Yes.

man with his frontal lobes pushed back like that is unpredictable.

Mysteries are like cayenne for the brain. The senses do pick up. Who was Jack the Ripper? Who killed Judge Crater? How did I burn through my paycheck so fast? Such questions can intrigue or infuriate, but the mind snaps to attention. from the Introduction

Everything in a story should be credible.

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.

I don't ask for a miracle," Helmar resumed, "but I do need speed, boldness, and sagacity." He was in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe's desk, with his briefcase on the little table at his elbow. His voice was a raspy oratorical baritone, hard and bony like him. He was going on. "And discretion - that is essential. You have it, I know. As for me, I am a senior partner in a law firm of the highest repute, with offices at Forty Wall Street. A young woman for whom I am responsible has disappeared, and there is reason to fear that she is doing something foolish and may even be in jeopardy. She must be found as quickly as possible.

Miss Duday is absolutely right," I told them. "I don't mean that what she said is right - that I don't know about - but she was right in saying that if you try to hold out and cover up you'll just prolong the agony. It'll all come out, don't think it won't, the bad with the good, and the quicker the better." I looked at the president. "It wouldn't hurt a bit, Mr. Brucker, if you followed Miss Duday's example. Where does everybody stand, the way you see it? For instance, this conference you were having. Whose idea was it? What were you talking about? What were you saying?

He does not admit this, but no man is so poor that he cannot afford a what if ...

That's ill-advised. More, it's puerile.

I got the address from her, and by good luck it wasn't Bucyrus, Ohio, but merely Brooklyn. Whatever else you want to say about Brooklyn, and so do I, it does have one big advantage, it's close.

Nothing is quite so uncomfortable as a loose conscience.

Courtesy is one's own affair, but decency is a debt to life

Please?" "Ridiculous," he said curtly,

A pig whose diet is fifty to seventy percent peanuts grows a ham of incredibly sweet and delicate succulence which, well-cured, well-kept and well-cooked, will take precedence over any other ham the world affords.

Opinions, from experts, cost money.

Nevertheless, it was not necessary to assume, as Wolfe had in the case of Viola Duday, that if he had killed Priscilla Eads he had probably done so by contrivance and not by perpetration. In spite of his pure white hair and wrinkled old skin, I would have bet, from the way he looked and moved and held his shoulders and head, that he could still have chinned himself up to five or six times.

Doyle stokes in a thousand shrewd touches with no effort at all. Wonderful.

Cream is put in a cardboard container, and the container is put in a carton on a bed of dry ice, and chunks of dry ice are packed on both sides of it and on top.

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.

War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens.

I do. I feel wonderful. Are you sure it's Carol Mardus?" "Yes. Certainly. It shouldn't have taken me so long." "Who and what is she?" "She got Dick started. She was a reader at Distaff, and she got Manny Upton to take Dick's stories. Then later he made her fiction editor. She is now." "Fiction editor of Distaff?" "Yes." "She wasn't on your list." "No, I didn't think of her. I've only seen her two or three times." "C-A-R-O-L? M-A-R-D-I-S?" "U-S." "Married?" "No. As far as I know. She was married to Willis Krug, and divorced.

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.

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

When people's brains stop working, just go somewhere else. (Death of a Doxie)

As sure as my name is Archie and not Archibald, I would have shot that goddamn orangutan dead in his tracks.

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.

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

I saw them. It was impossible to snitch a sample."
He grunted, lowering himself into his chair. "I didn't ask you to."
"Who said you did, but you expected me to. There are three of them in a glass case and the guard has his feet glued."
"What color are they?"
"They're not black."
"Black flowers are never black. What color are they?"
"Well." I considered. "Say you take a piece of coal. Not anthracite. Cannel coal."
"That's black."
"Wait a minute. Spread on it a thin coating of open kettle molasses. That's it."
"Pfui. You haven't the faintest notion what it would look like. Neither have I."
"I'll go buy a piece of coal and we'll try it.

I said it is vainglorious to reproach yourself for lack of omniscience. That is also true of omnipotence. Report in as you can.

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.

No, she did not denounce the impostor, but indubitably she made him aware that she knew he was not Eric Hagh. She may have done so merely by the way she looked at him, or she may have asked him some naive and revealing question. In any case, he knew he was in deadly peril from her, and he acted quickly and audaciously - and with dexterity, taking her keys from her bag. No, he is not a bungler, but -

Parker, who was six feet four with nothing to protect his bones from exposure to the weather but tough-looking leathery skin, was so skeptical that at one point I thought he was going to pass, but he finally conceded that the move might be undertaken without undue risk to juridical virtue, to his own reputation, or to his client's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. When all details had been settled and money passed - a dollar bill from Sarah to Parker as a token retainer - I got at the phone and dialed a number.

They say it works sometimes, but even if it does, how could you depend on anything you got that way? Not to mention that after you did it a few times any decent garbage can would be ashamed to have you found in it.

Good heavens." Wolfe pushed back his chair, not of course with violence, but with determination. "Archie. Understand this. As a man of action you are tolerable, you are even competent. But I will not for one moment put up with you as a psychologist. I

Likewise, the division between popular and serious work was a scheme perpetrated by academics in need of creating a false pantheon of living writers when it became impossible to come up with fresh dissertation topics (to earn degrees and prestige) concerning the writers in the true pantheon, who had been analyzed to exhaustion.

am quite aware that I bat close to a thousand on invitations to damsels only because I don't issue one unless the circumstances strongly indicate that it will be accepted.

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.

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.

A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality

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

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.

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

He was as indignant and irritated as if he had been served a veal cutlet with an egg perched on it.

He growled. "You know quite well that that locution is vile.

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

Yes, I said something to him, and then I cooled him off." "Cooled? By what process?" "I knocked him halfway across Broadway and took my wife." "You did?" Wolfe scowled at him. "What's the matter with your brain? Does it leak?

The police are not witlings; they will know that each of you may have had a private reason for your reserve not relevant to their investigation; but they will also know that if one of you was involved with Carol Mardus regarding the baby, and if you killed Ellen Tenzer, you would certainly have omitted her name from your list and you would not have identified the picture. So they will be importunate with all of you.

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

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.

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

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!

There were several things to chew on, but of course the main one was Bingham's alternatives. If he had known Carol Mardus as well as he said he did there were just four candidates. Even if he had killed her himself, he would name the ones she would have been most likely to pick if she hadn't picked him, so it was highly probable that it was one of those four. I stood at a window, and sat at my desk, and stood some more, going over them. Which one? That's the silliest game of solitaire there is, and we all play it, trying to tag a murderer as one of a bunch from what they said and how they looked and acted, unless you can spot something that really opens a crack. I couldn't.

Wolfe nodded. "That's a point, certainly, but it's not inexplicable. Looking at his face, which appears rigid in paralysis, I doubt if he'll explain for us, not now at least. I offer alternatives: some incident may have alarmed him and precipitated action, or he may not have known that if Miss Eads died before June thirtieth the Softdown stock, the bulk of her fortune, would go to others. I think the latter more likely, since he was offered, through Mr. Irby, a cash settlement of one hundred thousand dollars and wouldn't even discuss it.

Okay, Dolly Brooke killed her because she was going to marry a quote nigger unquote, and how do we prove it?'
He frowned. 'I have told you not to use that word in my hearing.'
'I was merely quoting. It isn't - '
'Shut up. I mean the word 'unquote' and you know it.

Wolfe: 'Our next step is obvious, but it must wait ... '
Archie: It was nice to know the next step was obvious, but it would have been even nicer to know what it was.

Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective.

Wolfe fluttered a hand. "It was distasteful to me, having to offer to take the money direct from you instead of through Mr. Helmar, but I felt you merited that consideration. I'm glad you contemn it as blackmail, since I like to pretend that I earn at least a fraction of what I collect; but the offer stands until ten in the morning, should you decide that you prefer it to this hide-and-seek.

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

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

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.

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

More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse.-Nero Wolfe in Blood Will Tell

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.
Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude.

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

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of the human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it.

There has never been a smoother operation since Whosis scattered the dust on the temple floor.

The back-seat driving of the less charitable emotions often makes me wonder that the brain does not desert the wheel entirely, in righteous exasperation. Not

How do we know that?" Lucy was frowning. "By inference. She did not attach a piece of paper to a blanket with a bare pin and wrap the blanket around the baby. Mr. Goodwin found a tray half full of safety pins in her house. But he found no rubber-stamp kit and no stamp pad, and one was used for the message on the paper. The inference is not conclusive, but it is valid. I am satisfied that on May twentieth Ellen Tenzer delivered the baby to someone, either at her house or, more likely, at a rendezvous elsewhere. She may or may not have known that its destination was your vestibule. I doubt it; but she knew too much about its history, its origin, so she was killed.

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.

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

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.

Nothing is simpler than to kill a man; the difficulties arise in attempting to avoid the consequences.

Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz would act if the house was on fire.

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 ...

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.

When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn't occur to him that a robber might draw the line somewhere.

Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book's worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over.

She had been a pleasant surprise. From what her father had said I had expected an intellectual treat in a plain wrapper, but the package was attractive enough to take your attention off of the contents ... she was not in any way hard to look at, and those details which had been first disclosed when she appeared in her swimming rig were completely satisfactory.

Wolfe regarded him. "Either, sir, you're an ass or you're masquerading as one. When there is evidence that you have murdered, there will be not a suspicion but a conviction. If I had evidence that one or more of you is guilty I wouldn't sit here half the night, inviting you to jabber; I would phone the police to come and get you. Have you anything to say?

He expressed appreciation for the information I provided, taking a dozen pages of notes in his small neat hand, and asking plenty of questions, not to challenge but just to elucidate. He did offer a pointed comment about what he called our dodge with Helmar, with his ward upstairs, and I rebutted.

Off - it was a hot night. We got back after midnight." "In your car?" "No, Helen Weltz had let us take hers. She has a Jaguar." My brows went up, and I spoke. "A Jaguar," I told Wolfe,

I have undertaken to to find an explanation for something that can't possibly be explained-Nero Wolfe

You know what my boss says? He says that skepticism is a good watchdog if you know when to take the leash off.

The avoidance of idiocy should be the primary and constant concern of every intelligent person, - Nero Wolfe

[T]he human equipment includes, for instance, a capacity for personal affection and a willingness to strangle selfish and predatory impulse with the rope of social decency.