I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience. Rex Stout More Quotes by Rex Stout More Quotes From Rex Stout Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes. Rex Stout women intellectual process 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 rivals detectives foxes I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best. Rex Stout stories two thinking Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for. Rex Stout shallow depth ideas I was reminding myself of the one basic rule for experts on females: confine yourself absolutely to explaining why she did what she has already done because that will save the trouble of explaining why she didn't do what you said she would. Rex Stout women female experts If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story. Rex Stout home book hands One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled. Rex Stout effort important believe To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all. Rex Stout animal men believe I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing. Rex Stout reading writing fun 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 stories letters book 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 bakers real character There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick. Rex Stout tricks physicist earth 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. Rex Stout democracy mean thinking As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter. Rex Stout distasteful latter War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread. Rex Stout pickles men war I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness. Rex Stout sleep book children The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach. Rex Stout stomach brain What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned 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 running mean believe Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try. Rex Stout brain men thinking I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions. Rex Stout assumption answers two
