Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Time
Renounce
Recognize
Unless
Lying
Comes
Tell
Renouncing
Enough
Shrewd
Men
Gracefully

More quotes by Rex Stout

Image
The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
Rex Stout
Image
I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout
Image
The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
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.
Rex Stout
Image
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.
Rex Stout
Image
We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
Rex Stout
Image
Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
Rex Stout
Image
Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
Rex Stout
Image
Chili is one of the great peasant foods. It is one of the few contributions America has made to world cuisine. Eaten with corn bread, sweet onion, sour cream, it contains all five of the elements deemed essential by the sages of the Orient: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter.
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
Rex Stout
Image
Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
Image
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