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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

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
World
Inertia
Wiser
Choice
Trust
Greatest
Choices
Force
Always

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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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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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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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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.
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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.
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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.
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I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
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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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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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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
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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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A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
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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.
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I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.
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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 more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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