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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

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
Sensible
Absurd
Clock
Goes
Trouble
Seems
Alarm
Alarms

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Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.
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Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone.
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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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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
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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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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.
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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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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
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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.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
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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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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
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There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.
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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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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.
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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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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
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