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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

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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
Going
Books
Kind
Sure
Make
Living
Detective
Write
Detectives
Two
Cook
Stories
Cooks
Book
Kinds
Writing
Pretty

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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.
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.
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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.
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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.
Rex Stout
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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
Rex Stout
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
Rex Stout
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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
Rex Stout