Quotes by Rex Stout

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

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

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

“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."[ magazine, December 10, 1965]””

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

“No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket or at least had been fooling around with timetables.””

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

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

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

“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.””

“A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221 1/2 B Baker Street and didn't find him."[, January 1942]””

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

“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.””