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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
Largely
Expected
Must
Always
World
Coincidences
Operates
Random
Coincidence

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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
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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.
Rex Stout
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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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I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
Rex Stout
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
Rex Stout
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I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
Rex Stout
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Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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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
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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
Rex Stout
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
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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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
Rex Stout