Rex Stout Quotes

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote. ~ Rex Stout

But I had long since learned from Wolfe that the corner the light doesn't reach is the one the dime rolled to. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

She turned back to me, graceful as a big cat, straight and proud, not quite smiling, her warm dark eyes as curious as if she had never seen a man before. I knew damn well I ought to say something, but what? The only thing to say was "Will you marry me?" but that wouldn't do because the idea of her washing dishes or darning socks was preposterous. ~ Rex Stout

One rule is this: that if the risk of a transaction is very great it should not be considered at all, no matter what profit it offers if it is successful. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

You can't base your actions on the theory that anyone you don't keep your eye on is apt to get killed. ~ Rex Stout

You are so engrossed in the fact that you are oblivious to its environment ~ Rex Stout

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

Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

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

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

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? ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

Currently he was going through the entire Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout, He'd just finished Murder by the Book and was in the process of downloading Triple Jeopardy to his e-reader when the alarm went off. ~ Keith R.A. DeCandido

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? ~ Rex Stout

Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
(Nero Wolfe) ~ Rex Stout

Nothing is quite so uncomfortable as a loose conscience. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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.
[Life magazine, December 10, 1965] ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

Then she's the mother!" "No. For various good reasons, no. I won't - " "But she knows who the mother is!" "Probably she did. At least she knew where she got it and who from. But she won't tell because she's dead. She was - " "Dead?" "I'm telling you. After a short talk with her Friday morning I left to get to a phone and send for help, and when I got back to the house her car was gone and so was she. I spent three hours searching the house. I'm reporting only the details that you need to understand the situation. Ellen Tenzer never returned to her house. At six o'clock yesterday morning a cop found a dead woman in a parked car - here in Manhattan, Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue. She had been strangled with a piece of cord. It was Ellen Tenzer, and it was her car. You would know about that if you read the papers. So she can't tell us anything. ~ Rex Stout

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

Fred put vinegar on things, and no man who did that ate at Wolfe's table. Fred did it back in 1932, calling for vinegar and stirring it into brown roux for a squab. Nothing had been said, Wolfe regarding it as immoral to interfere with anybody's meal until it was down and the digestive processes completed, but the next morning he had fired Fred and kept him fired for over a month. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

You'll have your turn," Wolfe told him. "He can have it now." Miss Duday was contemptuous. "That's all I have to say - unless you have questions?" "No. Well, Mr. Helmar? Go ahead." There was a polite interruption from Eric Hagh. He wanted a refill for his glass, and others were ready too, so there was a short recess. Hagh seemed to have got the impression that we were counting on him to keep Sarah Jaffee company, and I was too busy to resent it, but apparently Nat Parker wasn't. Wolfe poured beer from his third bottle, swallowed some, and prompted Helmar. "Yes, sir? ~ Rex Stout

for the first time in a popular novel I was reading about wrongdoing by the then-sacred institution, the FBI. I was reading open criticism and accusation of J. Edgar Hoover himself. I was reading it not from the typewriter of a young radical but from that of an old novelist. ~ Rex Stout

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 - ~ Rex Stout

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

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

I'm not hysterical." "Of course you are. All women are. Their moments of calm are merely recuperative periods between outbursts. I ~ Rex Stout

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

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

When we turned right on Thirty-fifth Street our suffix came along. By the time we rolled to the curb in front of Wolfe's house there wasn't even hyphen between us. ~ Rex Stout

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

Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damned fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the ... ~ Rex Stout

Though I suppose you've changed your mind, now that there's a woman sleeping in your bed - " "Nonsense. My bed - " "You own all the beds in this house except mine, don't you? Certainly it's your bed. ~ Rex Stout

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 ~ Rex Stout

A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

There's nothing as safe as ignorance or as dangerous. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

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

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

That's ill-advised. More, it's puerile. ~ Rex Stout

He looked at her. That was the first time I had seen him give her a direct and explicit look, and, since she was just off the line from him to me, I had a good view of it. It demolished one detail of his exposition - the claim that a man of his training and temperament couldn't possibly commit a murder. His look at her was perfect for a guy about to put a cord around a neck and pull tight. It was just one swift, ugly flash, and then he returned to Wolfe. ~ Rex Stout

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

Saul Panzer stood facing the cast, not the audience. There is nothing impressive about Saul. He is undersized, his nose and ears are too big, and his shoulders slant. With Saul a thousand wrongdoers had made the mistake of believing what they saw. He spoke. "I believe this is the way it was Thursday evening when Mr. Wolfe entered. Does anyone disagree? ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

Please?" "Ridiculous," he said curtly, ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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 ~ Rex Stout

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

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 ~ Rex Stout

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

Helmar took his time replying. Finally he said, "I'll reserve my answer to that." "I doubt if aging will help it," Wolfe said dryly. "Now that you know that Miss Eads had not gone to Venezuela, and I assure you she had no intention of going, how do you explain her backing out from her appointment with you, her departure, her asking you not to try to find her?" "I don't have to explain it. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

You can't tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don't like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass. ~ Rex Stout

Opinions, from experts, cost money. ~ Rex Stout

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

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

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

The police will want particulars, since you are the divorced husband, but I'll leave that to them. One more question, a hypothetical one. If Carol Mardus had a baby by Richard Valdon, conceived in April of last year and born last January, four months after Valdon's death; and if X knew about it, helped her dispose of it, and later, moved by pique or jealousy or spite, took it and left it in Mrs. Valdon's vestibule, who is X? Of the men in Carol Mardus's orbit, which one fits the specifications? I don't ask you to accuse, merely to suggest. ~ Rex Stout

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. ~ Rex Stout

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

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. ~ Rex Stout

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