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A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221½ B Baker Street and didn't find him.

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
Would
Streets
Bakers
Simply
Astonished
Went
Dickens
Sense
Holmes
Didn
Projection
Character
Theatrical
Find
Removed
Sherlock
Real
Street
Baker

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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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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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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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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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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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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
Rex Stout
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
Rex Stout
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The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
Rex Stout
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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.
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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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.
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout