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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.

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
Round
Rounds
Born
Thought
Character
Writing
Contrived
Flat
Flats

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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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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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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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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.
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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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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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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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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.
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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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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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
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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.
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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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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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A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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