Quote

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

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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
Kind
Short
Writer
Synthetic
Fiction
Quit
Asks
Quitting
Born
Tall
Two
Kinds
Character
Questions
Better
Characters

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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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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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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
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Everything in a story should be credible.
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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.
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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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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A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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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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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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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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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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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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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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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