Rex Stout Quotes & Sayings

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices. — Rex Stout

It is indubitable that Carol Mardus was the mother of the baby left in Mrs. Valdon's vestibule and that she was gravely disquieted to learn that I knew it and could demonstrate it. — Rex Stout

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

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

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. — Rex Stout

Wolfe could get sentimental about it if he wanted to, but I don't like any stranger nosing around my private affairs, let alone a nation of 130 million people.-Archie Goodwin — Rex Stout

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, — Rex Stout

To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving. — Rex Stout

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. — Rex Stout

I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion. — Rex Stout

Any company? Or was Olga here?" "No." I shrugged. "That requires no practice." I leaned to her a little. "Look, Mrs. Jaffee, I might as well admit it. I'm here under false pretenses. I said we wanted information, Mr. Wolfe and I, and we do, but we also want help. Of course you know of the provisions of Priscilla's father's will? Now that she is dead, you know that five people - Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday - you know that they will own most of the Softdown stock?" "Yes, certainly." She was frowning, concentrating at me. — Rex Stout

All there was to it, he was in a panic. He was scared stiff that any minute a fact might come bouncing in that would force him to send me down to Cramer bearing gifts, and there was practically nothing on earth he wouldn't rather do, even eating ice cream with cantaloupe or horseradish on oysters. — Rex Stout

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

Dived through the rain across the sidewalk, found — 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

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature? — 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

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action. — Rex Stout

If you collected all the good faith in this room right now you might fill a teaspoon. — Rex Stout

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. — 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

Old Time is never discreet or tactful. — Rex Stout

What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to. — Rex Stout

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards. — 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

If you want to be contentious wait until you learn what you have to contend with. It works better that way. — Rex Stout

To drink champagne with a blonde at one elbow and a brunette at the other gives a man a sense of well-being, and — Rex Stout

Only the man that knows to little, knows too much. Nero Wolfe — Rex Stout

But he wouldn't find me in the office, sitting there like patience in the hoosegow. — Rex Stout

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

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. — 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

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

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

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

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. — 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

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene. — Rex Stout

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

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. — 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

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

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

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

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. — Rex Stout

I decided that the only way to keep feminine intuition from sneaking through an occasional lucky stab was to stay away from women altogether, which wasn't practical. — 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

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. — Rex Stout

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. — 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

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

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

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

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. — Rex Stout

Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear. — Rex Stout

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

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

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

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. — Rex Stout

I think the police and the FBI are quite capable of sacrificing the rights of a private citizen to what they consider the public interest. — Rex Stout

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

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

I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered because he asked it. I don't like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it. — Rex Stout

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

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses. — 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

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

No. The morning will do. You're impetuous." He looked at the wall clock. Fritz would come any minute to announce dinner. "Can you get Saul now? — Rex Stout

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. — 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

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. — Rex Stout

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

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

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

Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish. — Rex Stout

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. — Rex Stout

At first, yes. But a long intimacy frees you of that illusion, and it also acquaints you with their scantiness of character. The effect they have produced on you is only their bluff. There is not such a thing as too much beauty. — Rex Stout

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

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

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. — 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

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

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

If he had married Mrs. Albert Grantham for her money I freely admit that no man marries without a reason and with her it would have been next to impossible to think up another one ... — Rex Stout

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable. — Rex Stout

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. — 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

Fritz giggled. He's the only man I've ever known who could giggle without giving you doubts about his fundamentals. — Rex Stout

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. — Rex Stout

Everything from war to picnics depends on the weather, as Wolfe remarked — Rex Stout

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

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? — 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

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. — Rex Stout