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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

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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
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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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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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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
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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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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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 will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
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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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I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.
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I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
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Everything in a story should be credible.
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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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No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.
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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.
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout