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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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Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Expected
Mistake
Responsibility
Cannot
Omniscience
Make
Reasonably
Love
Assurance
Assume
Assuming

More quotes by Rex Stout

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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
Rex Stout
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I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.
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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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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
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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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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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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Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
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The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout
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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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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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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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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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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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
Rex Stout
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The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
Rex Stout