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

More quotes by Rex Stout

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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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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
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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 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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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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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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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.
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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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The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
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A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality
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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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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
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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In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.
Rex Stout
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
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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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
Rex Stout
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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout