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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
Seems
Alarm
Alarms
Sensible
Absurd
Clock
Goes
Trouble

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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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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.
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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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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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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 requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
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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.
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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.
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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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Everything in a story should be credible.
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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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
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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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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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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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.
Rex Stout
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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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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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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.
Rex Stout