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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.

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
World
Coincidences
Operates
Random
Coincidence
Largely
Expected
Must
Always

More quotes by Rex Stout

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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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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.
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A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.
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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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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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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
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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.
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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.
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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout
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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
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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
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I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
Rex Stout
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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout
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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
Rex Stout