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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

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
Unknowable
Philosophers
Fools
Philosopher
Waste
Fool
Time

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The Glass Key is better than anything Hemingway ever wrote
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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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Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
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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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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
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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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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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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 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 requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime.
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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 constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.
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I think one or two of the later Holmes stories are among the best.
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A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.
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I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.
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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.
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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 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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One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.
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