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

Rex Stout

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Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Reason
Men
Impulses
Arena
Nonsense
Impulse
Library
May

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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.
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Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
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Everything in a story should be credible.
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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
Rex Stout
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In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
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I understand the technique of eccentricity it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
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I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.
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The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
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The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
Rex Stout
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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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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.
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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
Rex Stout
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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
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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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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? - he had better quit.
Rex Stout
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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