Quotes from Rex Stout

I asked what would be in the omelet, and he said four eggs, salt, pepper, one tablespoon tarragon butter, two tablespoons cream, two tablespoons dry white wine, one-half teaspoon minced shallots, one-third cup whole almonds, and twenty fresh mushrooms.

He dropped sheets on the fire, turned to look at her, and inquired, "Do you use 'infer' and 'imply' interchangeably, Miss Blount?" She did fine. She said simply, "No." "This book says you may. Pfui. I prefer not to interrupt this auto-da-fé. You wish to consult me?

I started to improvise a cutting remark, because I am methodical by temperament and like to see plans carried out when they have been made ...

You might have thought we were bound for the stratosphere to shine up the moon and pick wild stars.

Tell Fritz there will be guests at lunch. What do boys of that age eat?" "They eat everything." "Tell Fritz to have that.

It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself.

Don't overdo it. There are numerous layers of honesty, and the deepest should not have a monopoly.

He'll listen to me because he has to, or fire me, and he can't fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death.

When I finished, explaining that I had let him go because I was human, as he had said, he held it for another minute and then opened his eyes. He grunted. "You are not more human than I am. You are merely more susceptible, more sociable, and more vulnerable.

Repeat it," Upton commanded me. I repeated it. "A little malignant spirit," Wolfe said. "He not only had the pleasure of perturbing Mrs. Valdon; there was the added fillip of telling Miss Mardus what he had done.

Orrie's strong point was getting people to tell him things. It wasn't so much the questions he asked. As a matter of fact, he wasn't very good at questions; it was just the way he looked at them. Something about him made people feel that he ought to be told things.

My favorite spot on earth is only a seven-minute walk from where I live, Nero Wolfe's house on West 35th Street: Herald Square, where you can see more different kinds of people in ten minutes than anywhere else I know of. One day I saw the top cock of the Mafia step back to let a Sunday-school teacher from Iowa go first through the revolving door of the world's largest department store. If you ask how I knew who they were, I didn't, but that's what they looked like.

At the dinner table, and with coffee in the office afterwards, Wolfe resumed on the subject he had started at lunch—Voltaire. The big question was, could a man be called great on account of the way he used words, even though he was a toady, a trimmer, a forger, and an intellectual fop.

I don't try to abolish reality by shutting my eyes, nor do I gobble garbage.

It stuck out all over him, one of those born-to-command guys. I never invite them to parties.

Ah heah yawl makin' cawned beef ha-a-sh.…

One reason I like to work for him is that he never rides me for not acting the way he would act. He knows what I can do and that's all he ever expects; but he sure expects that.

But for anyone who is fed up with people and noise, the favorite spot could be Lily Rowan's cabin clearing. I admit there is a little noise, Berry Creek making a fuss about the rocks that won't move, but after a couple of days you hear it only when you want to.

You're an expert. Will they regard it as murder?' 'An expert requires facts to be expert about. I haven't got enough. If you want a guess, I think they will.

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

As I closed the door behind me he started to scorch me with an indignant look for being gone so long, but when he saw my face, which he knows better than I do, he abandoned it. 'Well?' he asked mildly.

He, as always in the company of good food, was sociable and expansive. Discovering that Lily had been in Egypt, he told about his house in Cairo, and they chatted away like a pair of camels, going on to Arabia and making quite a trip of it. She let him do most of the talking but made him chuckle a couple of times, and I began to suspect she wasn't very obvious and might even be smooth.

Like doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and many others, I get my income from the necessities, the tribulations, and the misfortunes of my fellow beings.

far as life falls short of perfection it is more fun outside the grave than in it.