Rex Stout

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You…

— 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…

— Rex Stout

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are…

— 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

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

— Rex Stout

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

— Rex Stout

“everything from war to picnics depends on the weather, as Wolfe remarked”

— Rex Stout

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

— 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…

— Rex Stout

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

— Rex Stout

The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote

— 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…

— Rex Stout

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that…

— Rex Stout

“To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred…

— Rex Stout

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

— Rex Stout

“Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective.”

— 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…

— Rex Stout

“I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that…

— Rex Stout

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

— Rex Stout

I was reminding myself of the one basic rule for experts on females: confine yourself absolutely to explaining why she did what…

— Rex Stout

“When I consider myself superior to anyone, as I frequently do, I need a better reason than his skin.”

— 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

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

— Rex Stout

“Yes, I said something to him, and then I cooled him off.” “Cooled? By what process?” “I knocked him halfway across Broadway…

— Rex Stout

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

— Rex Stout