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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
Assume
Assuming
Expected
Mistake
Responsibility
Cannot
Omniscience
Make
Reasonably
Love
Assurance

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
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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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Everything in a story should be credible.
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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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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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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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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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.
Rex Stout
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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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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
Rex Stout