Quote

Everything in a story should be credible.

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
Stories
Everything
Credible
Story

More quotes by 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
Image
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
Image
God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout
Image
I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
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
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
Image
I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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
As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout
Image
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
Image
Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
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
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
The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout
Image
Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
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
MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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
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
Image
The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
Rex Stout