Quotes from Rex Stout

Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none?

Sai benissimo in cosa consista la vita, è fatta di qualità umane, tra le quali c'è un controllo dignitoso e intelligente degli appetiti che condividiamo con i cani. Un uomo non divora una carcassa o ulula su una collina dall'alba al tramonto; mangia cibo ben cucinato, se può permetterselo, e in quantità moderata, e adatta con saggezza i propri ardori alla convenienza.

He was medium-short, with a central circumference that made it seem likely he would grunt if he bent over to tie his shoestring. Nothing, of course, like Nero Wolfe's globular grandeur.

You are to act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence.

any spoke will lead an ant to the hub

Certainly," he said virtuously. "She is my client. What's that noise you're making?" "It's something special," I told him, "and takes a lot of practice. Don't try it offhand. It's a derisive chortle.

She leveled the eyes at me, and, finding it difficult to meet them casually, I met them consciously.

He's the kind that lets out all his sail and then puffs to make his own wind.

but I knew from long experience that you never knew when you were going to run up against someone with as many feet as a centipede and all of them reluctant.

The best my head could do was let in a wild idea about the four of them taking turns with the window pole, presumably with Mrs. Demarest along to keep count of the jabs.

If I properly understood her métier, she replaces office workers temporarily absent?

had to gulp the coffee, and it was as hot as hell's dishwater.

I had a classics professor at the University of Illinois who after giving a reading assignment said, with genuine emotion, "Oh, to be reading Boethius for the first time." And so I say to you, "Oh, to be reading a Nero Wolfe mystery for the first time." —Stuart M. Kaminsky

What's the noise that you are making?" It's something special," I told him,"and takes a lot of practice. Don't try it offhand. It's a derisive chortle

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

Certainly. You don't owe him anything. As for me, I'm not that conceited. I'm not actually conceited at all. I merely think it's common sense to like myself.

Wolfe has taught me that one of the most important requirements for successful lying is relaxed vocal cords and throat muscles; otherwise you are forced to put on extra pressure to push the lie through, and the result is that you talk faster and raise the pitch and the blood shows in your face.

I know a chairman of the board of a billion-dollar corporation, one of the 2 per cent, who never gets his shoes shined and shaves three times a week.

Hotchkiss lock

Are you Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin?" "No. I'm my Archie Goodwin. I'm Nero Wolfe's confidential assistant.

You fat mountebank," he croaked. He wheeled and started for the door, found me in the way, blocking him, and stopped.

He once said that I ride words bareback.

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.

an impulse to reach for my gun. If I thought at all I suppose I was thinking that if a man in a taxicab wanted to make holes in Perrit and the face it was nothing to me.