Quote

Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.

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
Every
Takes
Month
Days
Finish
Bigs
Logical
Process
Length
Belt
Write
Kitchen
Pour
Book
Tried
Belts
Writing
Drink
Depending
Work
Months
Processes

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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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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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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 more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.
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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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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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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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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.
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
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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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
Rex Stout
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
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MY rule is never to be rude to anyone unless you mean it.
Rex Stout
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Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
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A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
Rex Stout
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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
Rex Stout
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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
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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.
Rex Stout
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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.
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
Rex Stout