Quotes from Rex Stout

He growled. "You know quite well that that locution is vile.

I decided that the only way to keep feminine intuition from sneaking through an occasional lucky stab was to stay away from women altogether, which wasn't practical.

I gathered that with the men the consensus was that women were okay in their place, which I guess was the way cavemen felt about it, and all their male descendants. The question was, and still is, what's their place?

His reaction was humane, romantic, and thoroughly admirable. As if we had rehearsed it a dozen times, he arose without a word, got his hat and stick from a nearby table, came and gave me a pat on the shoulder, growled at the audience, "A paradise for puerility," and turned and headed for the door. I followed. No one moved to intercept us.

Good heavens." Wolfe pushed back his chair, not of course with violence, but with determination. "Archie. Understand this. As a man of action you are tolerable, you are even competent. But I will not for one moment put up with you as a psychologist. I

I'm not hysterical." "Of course you are. All women are. Their moments of calm are merely recuperative periods between outbursts. I

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

He threw up his hands and waved them around, and shook all over, and laughed as if he never expected to hear a joke again and would use it all up on this one.

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy—the theories and experiments had gone on for years.

At first, yes. But a long intimacy frees you of that illusion, and it also acquaints you with their scantiness of character. The effect they have produced on you is only their bluff. There is not such a thing as too much beauty.

nature has arranged that when you overcome a given inertia the resulting momentum is proportionate. If I were to begin borrowing money I would end by devising means of persuading the Secretary of the Treasury to lend me the gold reserve.

cream is put in a cardboard container, and the container is put in a carton on a bed of dry ice, and chunks of dry ice are packed on both sides of it and on top.

I think the police and the FBI are quite capable of sacrificing the rights of a private citizen to what they consider the public interest.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try." -- Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude.

Wolfe grunted. "That's admirably specious, but drop it. I give you my word that I haven't the faintest notion of who killed Ellen Tenzer." Cramer eyed him. "Your word?" "Yes, sir.

Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book's worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over.

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

No, she did not denounce the impostor, but indubitably she made him aware that she knew he was not Eric Hagh. She may have done so merely by the way she looked at him, or she may have asked him some naive and revealing question. In any case, he knew he was in deadly peril from her, and he acted quickly and audaciously—and with dexterity, taking her keys from her bag. No, he is not a bungler, but—

being out on bail is good for the ego. It gives you a sense of importance, of being wanted; it makes you feel that people care.

You're damn right I would." Cramer took a step toward the door, remembered his hat, reached across the red leather chair to get it, and marched out. I went to the hall to see that he was on the outside when he shut the door. When I stepped back in, Wolfe spoke. "No mention of anonymous letters. A stratagem?

If personal vengeance were the only factor I could, as you suggested, go and stick a knife in him and finish it, but that would be accepting the intolerable doctrine that man's sole responsibility is to his ego. That was the doctrine of Hitler, as it is now of Malenkov and Tito and Franco and Senator McCarthy; masquerading as a basis of freedom, it is the oldest and toughest of the enemies of freedom.

Fred put vinegar on things, and no man who did that ate at Wolfe's table. Fred did it back in 1932, calling for vinegar and stirring it into brown roux for a squab. Nothing had been said, Wolfe regarding it as immoral to interfere with anybody's meal until it was down and the digestive processes completed, but the next morning he had fired Fred and kept him fired for over a month.

He expressed appreciation for the information I provided, taking a dozen pages of notes in his small neat hand, and asking plenty of questions, not to challenge but just to elucidate. He did offer a pointed comment about what he called our dodge with Helmar, with his ward upstairs, and I rebutted.

Well." Wolfe was judicious. "You were not under oath. The police have been lied to informally many times by many people, including me. The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.