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Rex Stout Quotes

Rex Todhunter Stout was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and 39 novellas between 1934 and 1975.

In 1959, Stout received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon XXXI, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century.

In addition to writing fiction, Stout was a prominent public intellectual for decades. Stout was active in the early years of the American Civil Liberties Union and a founder of the Vanguard Press. He served as head of the Writers' War Board during World War II, became a radio celebrity through his numerous broadcasts, and was later active in promoting world federalism. He was the long-time president of the Authors Guild, during which he sought to benefit authors by lobbying for reform of the domestic and international copyright laws, and served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. December 1886 – 27. October 1975  •  Other names رکس استوت, Ռեքս Ստաուտ, 雷克斯·史陶德
Rex Stout photo

Works

Might as Well Be Dead
Rex Stout: 30 quotes0 likes

Famous Rex Stout Quotes

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

Rex Stout book The League of Frightened Men

Source: The League of Frightened Men

“We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.”

Rex Stout book The Rubber Band

Source: The Rubber Band

“[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”

Rex Stout book Fer-de-Lance

Source: Fer-de-Lance

“Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.”

Rex Stout book The Doorbell Rang

Source: The Doorbell Rang

“Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.”

Rex Stout book The Red Box

Source: The Red Box

Rex Stout Quotes about books

“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

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damn 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

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“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

Rex Stout, who published two titles — The Nero Wolfe Cookbook and Please Pass the Guilt — in his 86th year
Publishers Weekly

“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

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“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

Rex Stout, page 3
Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

Rex Stout Quotes about people

“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.”

Rex Stout

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“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. There was no such conception of justice until after 1830. There was no such thing as a policeman or a detective in the world before 1830, because the modern conception of the policeman and detective, namely, a man whose only function is to find out who did it and then get the evidence that will punish him, did not exist. … In Paris before the year 1800 — read the Dumas stories — there were gangs of people whose business was to go out and punish wrongdoers. But why? Because they had hurt De Marillac or Richelieu or the Duke or some Huguenot noble, not just because they had harmed society. It is only the modern policeman that is out to protect society.”

Rex Stout

Rex Stout, pp. 248–249
Invitation to Learning

“The only difference between me and most people is that I'm perfectly aware that 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

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Rex Stout Quotes

“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 book The Doorbell Rang

Source: The Doorbell Rang

“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

Rex Stout, page 251
Invitation to Learning

“What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damn 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

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“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 book Bad for Business

Dol Bonner, to her employee Amy Duncan, chapter 2
Bad for Business

“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

Rex Stout, on why he turned from writing serious fiction to detective stories
The New York Times, "An Interview with Mister Rex Stout"

“I really mean what I say. 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 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.”

Rex Stout

Rex Stout, page 244
Invitation to Learning

“My God you love to get them, and good Lord you hate to answer them.”

Rex Stout

On letters from his readers
The New York Times, "Rex Stout, 85, Gives Clues on Good Writing"

“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

Rex Stout, page 246
Invitation to Learning

“There isn't a generation gap between you and me — there's two.”

Rex Stout

Rex Stout to photographer Jill Krementz
Publishers Weekly

“I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.”

Rex Stout

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“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?”

Rex Stout

he had better quit.
Rex Stout
The New York Times, "Talk with Rex Stout"

“There are various ways to call a man a liar. One way is just to scream it at him, which doesn't prove anything. Another is to establish facts by long and patient investigation. Still another way is not to call him a liar at all — let him do it himself.”

Rex Stout

On his work on Our Secret Weapon, as quoted in "Mystery Story Writer Turns Detective, Finding Axis Lies; Rex Stout, Creator of Nero Wolfe, Using Our Secret Weapon — Truth" by Trudi McCullough in The Milwaukee Journal (30 September 1942) http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19420930&id=tO4ZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6SIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3279,6165010

“I saw every performance Nijinsky danced in New York, and I see every baseball game I can get to. You watch a good second baseman digging for a badly thrown ball without letting his foot leave base and it's the same beautiful impossibility as a good pas de deux in Swan Lake.”

Rex Stout

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

“It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene.”

Rex Stout

Rex Stout, page 247
Invitation to Learning

“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

Nixon was re-elected in 1972, but Stout survived his August 1974 resignation from the Presidency by more than a year.
The New York Times, "Rex Stout, 85, Gives Clues on Good Writing"

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